BBC news 2009-08-07 加文本

BBC 2009-08-07

 
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BBC News with Victoria Meakin.

The United States Senate has confirmed Sonia Sotomayor as the fist Hispanic to serve on the country's Supreme Court. Judge Sotomayor who was president Obama's first nominee for a seat on the court was confirmed by a vote of 68 in favor to 31 opposed. John Donaldson reports.

Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation as a Supreme Court judge was never really in question. The Democrats' strong majority in the senate made President Obama's choice something of a showing. During the weeks of congressional hearings, Sonia Sotomayor followed the golden rule of most successful nominations, to be as uncontroversial as possible. She replaces Justice David Souter, who announced his retirement early this year. Like Mr. Souter, Sonia Sotomayor is regarded as a liberal so it is not expected she will alter the political balance of the court.

Thirteen years after Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo broke diplomatic relations, their leaders have pledged to strengthen their countries' economic and security ties, the two countries recently reestablished full diplomatic relations. Peter Greste reports from Nairobi.

Right up until late last year, Rwanda had been accused of using proxies to defend its interests in eastern Congo and fueling the war that's killed up with more than 2 million people. So those days' meeting between the two leaders was a significant step forward. President Paul Kagame crossed from Rwanda into the Congolese border town of Goma for a three-hour meeting with his counterpart Joseph Kabila. The two men discussed improving security along the frontier as well as ways of improving regional trade, but it was President Kagame's promise to never again be a destabilized influence inside the Congo that was the most significant.

The American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accused Eritrea of funding the Somali Islamist group Al-Shabaab and said the US intends to take action if it does not stop. Mrs. Clinton was speaking after a meeting with the head of the Somali transitional government Sheik Sharif Ahmed in Kenya for talks aimed at stabilizing Somalia. Eritrea has consistently denied arming Al-Shabaab.

The Prime Ministers of Russia and Turkey have signed a series of agreements to cooperate on major oil and gas projects. One of the deals is for the construction of a pipeline through Turkish waters which Moscow hopes will become a viable new route to supply Russian nature gas to Europe. The Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the cooperation was top of the agenda.
.Today, it’s obvious that the pipeline in South Stream is a necessity. It is very important for the reliable supply of gas to the whole of Europe, and for the further development of our cooperation with Turkey. On negotiations demonstrated that together with the Turkish leadership we can find solutions that open the road to new major projects in the energy sector.

This is the World News from BBC.

Reports from the Iranian capital Tehran say supporters of the leading opposition candidate Mir Hosesei Mousavi have taken to the street, shouting death to the dictator. Others are reportedly hooting their car horns. The Reuter's news agency said protesters gathered at Teheran's Finance Square where riot police have been deployed.

The US government says the number of Americans who lost their job in June is lower than forecast. Analysts interpret this as a sign that the labor market is making a recovery. The news comes on the day President Obama's chief economic adviser said the 800 billion dollars stimulus program was working and had added 2 to 3 percentage points to the GDP.

One of Britain’s most notorious criminals Ronnie Biggs who took part in what’s known as the great train robbery is being released from prison because he is ill. A train driver was badly injured during the multi-million dollar robbery, and the driver's union has deplored the decision of the Justice Secretary to release Biggs on compassionate grounds. June Kelly has more.

Ronnie Biggs is said to severely ill with pneumonia and doctors have said there is not much hope. Biggs may not have played a major role in the great train robbery but he ended himself a place in history when he broke out of jail and went on the run. He ended up in Brazil but then finally returned to Britain for medical treatment and the jail sentence here awaited for so long. Earlier this week, Biggs was taken to hospital Norwich from the nearby prison. Saturday marks his 80th birthday and the 46th anniversary of the great train robbery.

The social networking websites Twitter and Facebook have been severely disrupted by hackers. Twitter was shut down altogether for several hours while Facebook users suffered intermittent problems. Both sides were victims of what's known as a denial of service attack in which hackers use a virus to make a large number of computers simultaneously visit a website, preventing legitimate traffic from getting through.

BBC News.

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