BBC news 2009-07-21 加文本

BBC 2009-07-21


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BBC News with Fiona McDonald.

President Barack Obama has marked the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing by praising the astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission for inspiring a generation of scientists and engineers. The president was speaking after meeting the first men to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Kevin Connolly reports.

Like millions of other Americans, Barack Obama remembers precisely where he was as the drama of Apollo 11th mission unfolded. In his case as a young child growing up in Hawaii, he recalled watching with his grandfather for the spaceship’s safe return to earth and being told it was an example of how America could do anything to which it set its mind. America’s space agency wants the Obama administration to agree to send NASA crews back into space, first to the moon and then to Mars, and the decision may come this year. But Mr. Obama gave no hint that he is ready for such an expensive and risky undertaking.

India and the United States have agreed in a defense pact that boosts American arms sales to India. At a news conference in Delhi, the American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there’ll be a monitoring agreement to ensure that India did not transfer sensitive technology from American weapons to other countries. She said the two countries had also agreed to boost nuclear cooperation.

Prime Minister Singh told me that sites for two nuclear parks for US companies have been approved by the government. These parks will advance the aims of the US-India civil nuclear agreement, facilitate billions of dollars in US reactor exports and create jobs in both countries.

The American Defense Secretary Robert Gates has announced a temporary increase in the size of the American army. Mr. Gates said an extra 22,000 troops would be needed for the next three years. He said it would ease strains caused by military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Today, I am announcing a decision to temporarily increase the active duty end strength of the army by up to 22,000. That is a temporary increase from the current authorized end strength--permanent end strength of 547,000 to an authorized temporary end strength of 569,000 active duty soldiers.

A bomb blast has killed 4 American soldiers in Afghanistan making July the deadliest month for international troops there since the war began in 2001.

Two Bosnia Serbs have been given long prison terms by a United Nations tribunal for war crimes against Muslim civilians during the Bosnian war of the early 1990s. Milan Lukic was found guilty of several offenses including killing more than a hundred people by locking them in two houses. They were then set on fire using explosives. He was sentenced to life. Sredoje Lukic, sentenced to 30 years in prison, was found guilty of involvement in one of the house fires.

World News from the BBC.

Gunmen from the Somali militant group Ashgabat have looted two United Nation’s compounds in Southern Somalia. Earlier the group had said that three UN agencies were enemies of Islam and will be shut down. Peter Greste reports.

According to a statement issued by Ashgabat, three UN agencies had been found to be working against the benefits of the Somalia Muslim population and against the establishment of an Islamic state. The agencies include the UN Development Program, the Department of Safety and Security, and the UN’s Political Office for Somalia. Soon after the statement, gunmen arrived at two UN compounds in Baidoa and Wajid. There they began looting cars and other equipment. No staffs were harmed in either incident but they underscore the increasingly difficult conditions for aid workers trying to operate in Somalia.

British press reports say a Saudi princess has been granted asylum after having an illegitimate child by an Englishman. The independent newspaper said the princess told a British judge that she would be stoned to death for adultery if she returned home. She is said to have met her English boyfriend who is not a Muslim during a visit to the UK and returned to England after her elderly husband became suspicious of her behavior.

The former President of Peru Alberto Fujimori is being sentenced to seven and a half years in prison after being convicted of paying a 15-million-dollar bribe to his former security chief. He is already serving a 25-year term for human rights abuses. Mr. Fujimori told the court that he had paid the money to his aide Vladimiro Montesinos because he feared that he was planning to overthrow the government.

European scientists say they have discovered why a 10-year-old girl born with half a brain has nearly perfect sight in one eye. The German girl’s condition would normally have deprived her one-field vision, left or right. But the scientists say their test show that as the girl has grown up, her brain has effectively rewired itself to compensate so that she sees with the power of two through one eye.