BBC news 2009-05-03 加文本

BBC News with John Jason.

The World Health Organization says there's no evidence that swine flu is spreading in a sustained way around the world. The agency still believes a pandemic is imminent, but it says transmission of the virus outside North America is sporadic. In Mexico, the Foreign Minister has criticized China, where the virus has also been reported, for imposing travel restrictions on Mexicans who showed no sign of being ill. Stephen Gibbs reports.

While millions of Mexicans remain in their homes as part of a government strategy to try to prevent the spread of the virus, the government here is confronting a secondary problem--the diplomatic and economic fallout from this crisis. Many airlines have reduced or cancelled flights to the country. Several international tour operators are refusing to take bookings for the next month. Singapore is placing anyone arriving from Mexico in quarantine for seven days. 300 people remain confined inside a luxury Hong Kong hotel by the authorities after one Mexican guest fell ill.

After a week of increasing criticism of the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, one of his own cabinet ministers has said the government is lamentably failing to get its message across. In a newspaper article, the Minister Hazel Blears said many British people no longer believe the government's policy announcements. Laura Kuenssberg reports.

Hazel Blears, the British Communities Secretary, often appears to be the Labour government's cheerleader in chief, with a reputation for loyalty to the party. Sources close to Ms. Blears insist she's not making a personal attack on the Prime Minister, but her criticisms come at the end of a terrible week for Gordon Brown. He was attacked for his handling of changes to the controversial system of MP's expenses and some senior Labour figures have started to openly question his government's performance.

The United States military in Iraq says an attacker wearing an Iraqi army uniform has opened fire on coalition forces, killing two American soldiers. Three others were injured in the incident in a joint US-Iraqi army base outside the northern city of Mosul. The US military said the gunman was also killed. From Baghdad, Natalia Antelava reports.

A US military statement gave little information on the attack and none on the identity of the gunman who killed two American soldiers and wounded three others inside the joint US-Iraqi base near Mosul. But Iraqi sources inside the base say that the attacker's name was Hassan al-Dulaimi, and that he was an imam--a cleric assigned to an Iraqi army unit at the base. While the security situation has been improving in some parts of Iraq, Mosul remains one of the country's most troubled areas where the Sunni insurgency is still strong.

The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has suggested that half of the homes in an area of central Italy devastated by a recent earthquake could now be lived in again. But he said many people were afraid to return to their homes because of continuing aftershocks.

World News from the BBC.

Streets in towns and cities across the Philippines are expected to empty soon as people gather in front of televisions to watch their national boxing hero Manny Pacquiao fight for another world title. Pacquiao is in Las Vegas to face the British fighter Ricky Hatton, who currently holds the IBO light welterweight crown. Pacquiao has political ambitions and he's so wildly popular in the Philippines that he is sometimes talked of as a possible presidential contender.

Somali pirates have captured a cargo ship northwest of the Seychelles islands. The vessel, a Greek-owned bulk carrier, the MT Ariana, has a Ukrainian crew of about 20. A senior maritime official Andrew Mwangura said none of the crew members was believed to have been hurt. In the Somali capital Mogadishu, President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed spoke to journalists about the efforts being made to tackle the problem of piracy.

"You know the problems of the sea pirates. They are causing a lot of problems to this country. It is important to rebuild the force, the navy, to take care of the problem. Efforts are also being made on pirates--every kind of effort--to make sure they stop their actions and become members of civil society. Good progress has been made so far. " (www.hxen.net)

A legal advocacy group for Latinos in the United States has criticized the acquittal of two young men of charges in connection with the killing of an undocumented Mexican immigrant. A spokesman for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Henry Solano, said the group would ask the US Justice Department to consider filing federal hate crime charges against the two men acquitted. Defence lawyers for the two young men portrayed the incident as a street fight in which the immigrant, Luis Ramirez, had been the aggressor. Correspondents say the case has exposed tension in the small coal mining town of Shenandoah between the white majority and Latino immigrants.

BBC News.