BBC news 2009-07-18 加文本

BBC 2009-07-18


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BBC News with Marry Small

Thousands of opposition supporters in the Iranian capital Teheran have staged fresh protests against last month’s controversial presidential election. Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowds who chanted the name of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the candidate officials say came second; reports also speak of several arrests. Earlier the former President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani delivered a powerful sermon at Friday prayers.  He said many Iranians had doubts about the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The situation created after the announcement of election results is bitter. I don't think anyone from any faction wanted this. And now all of us have been harmed, all have been harmed. Why did it happen? Today we need unity more than anytime in the past.

Indonesian police say bomb attacks on two luxury hotels in the capital Jakarta were carried out by two suicide bombers. At least nine people were killed including the bombers and many others injured. Police are describing a bedroom at the Marriott hotel where a bomb was defused and bomb making materials were found as the attackers’ control center. Indonesia’s ambassador to the United Nations Marty Natalegawa said those behind the attacks would be punished.

We are not going to speculate at this juncture who the possible perpetrators are, and so really do the good old-fashioned policing work and let our authorities work in a diligent manner to find the perpetrators. Let me assure you of one point. These people who perpetrated these heinous acts, they may be able to try to run, but they cannot hide.

An Italian judge has jailed more than fifty members of a Sicilian Mafia syndicate, some of them for up to twenty years in jail, in a case the Italian government says is a landmark in the battle against organized crime. The accused, who’re all linked to the Lo Piccolo crime family were prosecuted for running protection rackets involving shops and businesses on the island of Sicily. The BBC correspondent in Rome says failure to pay often led to violence, arson and occasionally murder. It’s the first time that local groups of Sicilian businessmen working closely with the police have achieved a successful prosecution.

The American space shuttle Endeavour has successfully docked with the International Space Station two days after its launch. Charles Scanlon reports from Miami.

The seven crew members on board the Endeavour are joining six already at the space station making it the largest number of astronauts ever assembled in orbit. The shuttle will remain for a week and a half to complete work on a Japanese space laboratory. Before docking the Endeavour performed a back flip so that scientists at the space station could photograph its entire surface. They were looking for any damage caused during Wednesday’s launch. NASA says the shuttle’s in no danger even though it was hit by debris thought to be foam that peeled off from the fuel tank.

World News form the BBC

The American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has arrived in Mumbai at the start of her visit to India. Before going Mrs. Clinton called on the country to join the United States in supporting Pakistan’s fight against terrorism. Relations between the South Asian neighbors have been tense since the Mumbai bomb attacks last year which India blames on Pakistani militants. Mrs. Clinton’s agenda is also likely to include trade and climate change.

Supporters of the deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya have staged demonstrations across the country amid reports that the ousted leader is about to return home. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela said Mr. Zelaya who’s been in neighboring Nicaragua would cross the border soon and had his full support. The United States has called for restraint.   

The Polish philosopher and political theorist Leszek Kolakowski has died in hospital at Oxford in England. He was 81. A former communist Kolakowski spent almost half his life in an exile in the West. The Polish Parliament held a one minute’s silence in remembrance of his contribution to a free and democratic Poland. Adam Easton reports from Warsaw.

After the war he studied philosophy and became a professor. Seeing the destruction wrought by the Nazis in Poland he joined the Communist Party. But he gradually became disillusioned and more daring in his criticism of the system. In 1966, he was expelled from the Party and two years later he lost his job. Seeking exile in the West, he eventually settled at Oxford, in the 1980s from his base in Britain, he supported Poland's pro-democracy Solidarity Movement which overthrew communism in 1989.

French police are investigating an incident where two cyclists in the Tour de France were shot at and slightly injured with an air rifle. The organizers of the tour said the New Zealand rider Julian Dean, was hit on the finger, Oscar Freire of Spain was also injured.

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