BBC news 2009-07-22 加文本

BBC 2009-07-22


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BBC News with Nick Kelly

There have been renewed clashes between police and opposition demonstrators in the Iranian capital Tehran. Eyewitnesses reported that dozens of protesters were arrested in one of the city’s main squares after chanting slogans against President Ahmadinejad, the declared winner of last month’s disputed election. Our correspondent Jon Leyne reports.

Once again opposition supporters came out on the streets despite police warnings that they would be severely dealt with. Witnesses say hundreds or according to some accounts, thousands of opposition members demonstrated in Tehran. There were large numbers of riot police, but also plain-clothes security officers who infiltrated the crowds. Violence broke out and there were dozens of arrests. The opposition has also been trying a new tactic--switching electrical equipment off then on again at exactly the same time in an attempt to bring down the power grid. One Iranian who recently left the country told me there was atmosphere of defiance there which could be felt in every corner.

The Chairman of the US Central Bank Ben Bernanke says economic recovery should start gradually as the year progresses accelerating in 2010, but he said unemployment would increase. Rodney Smith reports.

Mr. Bernanke warned that rising unemployment could weaken consumer confidence in the US and harm a gradual economic recovery. On the plus side, Mr. Bernanke sees recovery starting gradually as the year progresses, accelerating through next year and into 2011. The two big threats to the fragile recovery, he indicated, could be inadequate stimulation of the economy, therefore interest rates would have to be held down, and rising unemployment which could seriously impact on consumer confidence and the capacity of consumers to stimulate demand through spending.

A Brazilian report says 5,000 adolescents are killed every year in the country's cities and towns, most of them poor and uneducated black males. The report was released jointly by the UN Children's Agency, the Brazilian government and a slum monitoring group. Brazil’s Under-Secretary for Human Rights Carmen de Olveira said the murder rate among young Brazilians was 30 times that experienced in European countries and the most of the victims had links with the drugs trade, generally as users rather than dealers.

American scientists have begun tracking the life history of some of the world’s oldest and tallest trees in California amid concerns that climate change might be causing them to die prematurely. Botanists from the University of Washington are carrying out experiments in Yosemite National Park which is home to many towering redwood trees. Dr. James Lutz, one of the researchers, says it’s a long-term project.

No one researcher can see the ultimate results of the work. I plan on monitoring this plot for, say, the next 25 or 30 years, after which I will hope turning the plot over to someone in the next generation of forest ecology and I think that the most valuable in these long-term projects is only realized after 50 or even a hundred years.

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Venezuela has rejected a United States government report that criticized its efforts to combat drug trafficking. The report said that drug corruption had reached ministerial level in Venezuela, but Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said that the report lacked objectivity and was intended to promote what it termed Washington’s “interventionist pretensions”.

Lawyers for the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi say recordings of conversations purportedly between him and a prostitute are the fruit of invention. Mr. Berlusconi has recently faced questions about a series of alleged scandals. Our Rome correspondent Duncan Kennedy has the details.

Patrizia D'Addario, an escort girl claims to have spent a night at Mr. Berlusconi’s private residence in Rome. She said she made secret recordings of their encounters and now those audio tapes have been leaked. In one excerpt, a man’s voice is heard asking Ms. D’Addario to wait on the bed while he takes a shower. Italian newspapers who published the tapes claimed the man is Mr. Berlusconi, but the Prime Minister has already denied meeting Ms. D’Aaddario and says he has never paid for sex.

Four firefighters in Spain have been killed while trying to tackle a blaze at a nature reserve in the northeast of the country. Another two were injured. A local government official said the fire had started in a remote section of forest in the Els Ports Nature Park and the firefighters died after the wind changed direction and fanned the flames.

And pro-Palestinian activists have filmed their own version of a controversial Israeli television advert which critics said made light of Palestinian suffering. The original advert for an Israeli mobile phone company showed Israeli soldiers enjoying a game of football with unseen Palestinians behind a high concrete wall. But when the Palestinian activists filmed themselves kicking footballs over the barrier Israel’s building in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers on the other side responded by firing tear gas at them.

And that’s the latest. BBC News.