BBC news 2009-08-10 加文本

BBC 2009-08-10


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BBC News with Fiona MacDonald.

Nearly one million people have been evacuated from the coastal regions of China which have been battered by Typhoon Morakot. It’s brought torrential rains and high winds that have destroyed hundreds of houses and flooded vast tracts of farmland. Michael Bristow reports from Beijing.

The storm first hit Fujian province in southeastern China, but towns and villages all along the coast have been put on high alert. Ships were ordered back to port and relief workers reinforced coastal defenses. When the storm hit, roads were closed, flights were cancelled, and bus service’s suspended. This is typhoon season in China so this storm is not entirely unexpected. But Beijing officials admit to being surprised at how fast this typhoon has hit the Chinese coast. Before arriving in China, Typhoon Morakot left behind it a trail of devastation in Taiwan and the Philippines.

The interim government in Honduras says it won’t allow a delegation from the Organization of American States to visit because it objects to the presence of the OAS secretary general, Jose Miguel Insulza. The delegation was due to arrive on Tuesday in an attempt to mediate in the Honduran political crisis. Emilio San Pedro reports.

In a terse statement, the Honduran Foreign Ministry said that any delegation which included the group's secretary general, Jose Miguel Insulza, was not welcome in the Central American country. The reason, the interim authorities say, is that Mr Insulza has been far from impartial since he came to power following the military coup in June which was widely condemned in the region and further afield. The OAS suspended Honduras just days later and has been actively campaigning for the deposed President Manuel Zelaya’s return to power ever since.

A senior aide to the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, has told the BBC that Mr. Mehsud is gravely ill. Both the American and the Pakistani governments believe he was killed in an American rocket attack on Wednesday. From Islamabad, Orla Guerin reports.

This is the first admission by a senior Taliban figure close to Baitullah Mehsud that anything is amiss. Maulana Nur Syed, a senior aide to the Taliban chief, told the BBC that Mehsud is seriously ill. He denied this was linked in any way to claims that Mehsud had been killed in a US missile strike on Wednesday. But it’s thought that by making this statement, the Taliban are preparing the ground for an announcement that Pakistan’s most wanted man is in fact dead.

The defeated Sri Lankan guerrilla group, the Tamil Tigers has accused the government of illegally seizing their new leader abroad. The Sri Lankan authorities announced on Friday that the man Selvarasa Pathmanathan had been arrested in an Asian country. But the Tamil Tigers say Mr. Pathmanathan was abducted from a motel in Malaysia and removed illegally to Sri Lanka.

World News from the BBC.

Rescue teams in New York have recovered the bodies of seven of the victims of a midair collision between a helicopter and a light plane which is believed to have killed nine people. The accident happened on Saturday in full view of tourists and residents along a New Jersey and Manhattan riverfronts. Hundreds of people scurried for cover as debris fell from the sky.

The American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged the Angolan government to hold credible elections and improve the country’s human rights record. Mrs. Clinton made the comments on her arrival in Angola, the third stop of her African tour. Presidential elections were due to be held this year, but delays mean they’re more likely to be held in 2010. Louise Redvers  reports from Luanda.

The Secretary of State said that America wanted to work with Angola to re-launch its war-battered agricultural sector, to enhance regional security, to fight HIV and malaria and to expand overall trade investments. She also reiterated the need for good governance and strong democratic institutions, and said it was important to be vigilant against corruption. Mrs. Clinton praised Angola for its progress since the end of the war in 2002, and said the 2008 parliamentary elections have been peaceful and credible although she stopped short of calling them free or fair.

The Eritrean ambassador to Kenya Salih Omar Abdu has denied that any of his embassy staff in Nairobi have been expelled from the country. On Saturday the Kenyan Foreign Ministry said it had deported an unnamed Eritrean diplomat for financing the Somali Islamist group Al-shabaab. The ambassador told the BBC that such allegations were untrue and a smear.

There have been three explosions on the Spanish island of Majorca after the Basque separatist organization Eta issued a telephone warning. The first was a small bomb left in the toilet at a beachfront restaurant in the island’s capital Palma.  No one was injured. Two further blasts took place at another nearby restaurant and under a square.

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