BBC news 2009-08-16 加文本

BBC 2009-08-16


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BBC News with Victoria Meakin.

The United States Senator Jim Webb who's been visiting Burma says he has secured the release of an American man jailed for entering the home of the detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. A statement from the Senator's office said they would fly by military aircraft to Thailand. Andre Vornic of our Asia-Pacific Desk reports.

Senator Webb appears to have convinced the Burmese authorities of his good will. Thanks to him, John Yettaw who had been sentenced to seven years' hard labor will be freed and deported. For her part, Aung San Suu Kyi who because of Mr. Yettaw's actions received an extended term of house arrest is unlikely to be shown such mercy. She did, however, agree to meet Senator Webb, suggesting she sees some merit in the American's new policy of engagement with her jailors. The Obama administration seems to have concluded that ever tighter sanctions and isolation may no longer be the best approach.

Hamas says it has restored order in southern Gaza after crushing an uprising by a radical Islamist group. The leader of the Jihadi Soldiers of God organization blew himself up during a gun battle involving hundreds of Hamas fighters. He’d earlier declared the establishment of what he called “an Islamic emirate” and accused Hamas of not being Islamic enough. From Jerusalem, Katya Adler reports.

Abdul-Latif Moussa blew himself up using a suicide belt, killing the Hamas policemen sent to arrest him .He was the imam of a mosque run by the Jihadi Soldiers of God group .He’d sworn he would die rather than renounce his cause. Hamas says the situation is now under control. It has cracked down hard on extremist fringe groups before. It knows it's losing support among some young men to those offering more radical solutions to Gaza's problems .Soldiers of God is not the first Al-Qaeda inspired group to appear in Gaza, it unlikely to be the last.

The Indian government has asked the United States to explain why a leading Bollywood film star was detained for two hours at New York's Newark Airport. Shahrukh Khan, who was released after the Indian Embassy in the US intervened, said he felt angry and humiliated. The actor says he was questioned because he has a Muslim name. The Indian Information Minister Ambika Soni said in the US, frisking travelers often went beyond permissible limits and suggested that India should treat American visitors in a similar manner.

But if somebody will be again and again causing hurt to us as a nation, then I think our government should put in some kind of reciprocal arrangements.

A French government minister has called for the burka, the head-to-toe garment worn by a minority of Muslim women in France, to be banned. Fadela Marara, a Muslim of Algerian origin, told the Financial Times newspaper in London that the burka amounted to the oppression of women. Banning it would help fight what she called "the gangrene, the cancer" of radical Islam.

World News from the BBC.

At least seven people were killed and 90 others injured in a rare car bomb attack outside NATO's military headquarters inside Kabul's fortified security area. An Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman said a female member of parliament Hawa Nuristani was among those injured. He described the blast which came only days before the Afghan presidential elections as a suicide attack with a moving car.

Police in Helsinki say a ransom demand has been made to the Finnish owners of a Russian-crewed cargo ship that disappeared nearly three weeks ago after passing through the English Channel. The vessel, the Arctic Sea, was reported to have been boarded by armed men in the Baltic. Adam Mynott reports.

Mystery swirls around the merchant ship Arctic Sea which has disappeared somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean with a cargo of timber valued over 1.5 million dollars. The police in Finland say the owners of the vessel have received a ransom demand which they are treating as a serious attempt to extort money. No further details were given. Russia has dispatched naval vessels to hunt for the Arctic Sea and they reported last night that it had been spotted near the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa, but this was later denied. Other maritime authorities say the vessel is steaming somewhere off the West African coast.

Reports from Algeria say 15 members of the same family have been killed in a head-on crash between a mini-bus and a lorry. The family group, all travelling in the mini-bus, was heading for the beach. The driver of the vehicle also died in the accident, which happened on the outskirts of Ghazaouet in the northwest of Algeria.

The Canadian government is to spend 68 million dollars to encourage pig farmers to cease or cut back production for the next three years. The move comes as the country's pork industry is facing its worst crisis in over 50 years mainly due to export bans related to the H1N1 swine flu virus and high feed prices.

BBC News.