BBC news 2009-03-07 加文本

BBC News with Marian Marshall.

Susan Tsvangirai, the wife of the new Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, has been killed in a car crash. Mr. Tsvangirai was slightly injured. His long-standing rival, President Robert Mugabe, has visited him in hospital. Here's our Southern Africa correspondent Peter Biles.

According to sources in the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai had been travelling to his rural home. His vehicle is said to have been involved in a collision on a road south of Harare. Mr. Tsvangirai was not seriously hurt, but his wife Susan who was travelling with him was killed. Mr. Tsvangirai was taken to a private hospital in Harare. A few hours later, President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace were seen arriving at the clinic to visit him. The accident comes just two days after Mr. Tsvangirai delivered his maiden speech in Parliament after being sworn in as prime minister in Zimbabwe's new power-sharing government.

Unemployment in the United States has reached its highest level for more than 25 years at 8.1%. The worst losses were in professional and business services, factories, construction, retail and leisure. Speaking to police graduates in Columbus, Ohio, President Obama said he knew that Americans were experiencing the real impact behind the jobless figures.

"Just this morning, we learned that we lost another 651,000 jobs throughout the country in the month of February alone, which brings the total number of jobs lost in this recession to an astounding 4.4 million. I don't need to tell the people of this state what statistics like this mean."

The American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has met her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva. The discussion is aimed at what she termed resetting the US-Russian relationship after tensions during the Bush administration. She said that she agreed to work towards a new strategic arms reduction agreement and hoped to have a deal by the end of the year. Imogen Foulkes reports from Geneva.

The talks between Hillary Clinton and Sergei Lavrov were brief but clearly very friendly. Both stressed how much they liked each other. They committed themselves to working together on issues which they said were of huge importance to the entire world, arms reduction, combating the spread of nuclear weapons, fighting terrorism. They expect to get a new treaty on reducing their own nuclear stockpiles by the end of this year.

Morocco says it's cut diplomatic ties with Iran. The move follows comments from an Iranian politician Ali Akbar Nateq Nuri in which he questioned the sovereignty of the Gulf state of Bahrain by implying it was an Iranian province. Morocco and other Sunni Muslim countries took offense at the remarks. In the statement, the Moroccan Foreign Ministry said it hadn't received an explanation for the comments from the Iranian authorities.

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The UN says it now believes thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded in the fighting in Sri Lanka. However, UN humanitarian officials said there were no verifiable numbers due to a lack of access for relief workers. The Sri Lankan government has described the statement as irresponsible.

The lawyer of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man accused of locking his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathering seven children with her, says his client will plead guilty to most of the charges he is facing. Mr. Fritzl's trial starts in just over a week. Bethany Bell reports from Vienna.

Josef Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, told the Austrian news agency APA that his client expects to spend the rest of his life behind bars. He told APA that Joseph Fritzl would plead guilty to the general charges of deprivation of liberty, rape, incest and coercion but will contest the murder charge. Mr. Mayer said Joseph Fritzl was not a sex monster but he loved his daughter in his own way. He said Mr. Fritzl can be described as a deeply disturbed personality that wanted the family he could be sure of.

The Colombian government has announced that it will release from prison two former left-wing rebels who are now said to be willing to work for peace. The Interior Ministry said the two former FARC guerillas, known as Olivo Saldana and Karina, have renounced violence and will help other former fighters to reintegrate into society. The Colombian authorities have faced criticism in the past over the failure of a similar initiative.

The Irish company Smurfit Kappa has confirmed that the Venezuelan government has seized land it uses to grow trees for cardboard production. President Hugo Chavez has said the plot was taken over as part of what he called his socialist agrarian revolution. The Venezuelan president said the eucalyptus plantation in Lara state was drying up local rivers and the land would now be used to grow corn and beans.

BBC News.

Glossary:

maiden speech: the first speech that someone makes in parliament

stockpile: A stockpile of things is a large quantity of them that have been stored for future use.

take offense at: If someone takes offense at something you say or do, they feel upset, often unnecessarily, because they think you are being rude to them.

cellar: A cellar is a room underneath a building, which is often used for storing things in.

deprivation: If you suffer deprivation, you do not have or prevented from having something that you want or need.

incest: Incest is the crime of two members of the same family having sexual intercourse, for example a father and daughter, or a brother and sister.

coercion: Coercion is the act or process of persuading someone forcefully to do something that they do not want to do.

disturbed: A disturbed person is very upset emotionally, and often needs special care or treatment.

be sure of: If someone is sure of something, they will definitely get it or they think they will definitely get it or they think they will definitely get it.

renounce: If you renounce a belief or a way of behaving, you decide and declare publicly that you no longer have that belief or will no longer behave in that way.

reintegrate: to integrate again into an entity

agrarian: Agrarian means relating to the ownership and use of land, especially farmland, or relating to the part of society or economy that is concerned with agriculture.

eucalyptus: 桉树

dry up: If something dries up or if something dries it up, it loses all its moisture and becomes completely dry and shrivelled or hard.