BBC news 2009-09-20 加文本

BBC 2009-09-20


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BBC News with Gano Howards.

The head of South African athletics has admitted lying when he denied the knowledge of gender tests carried out on the runner Caster Semenya before her controversial medal winning performance at the World Athletics Championships last month. The admission by Leonard Chuene follows the publication of an email exchange between him and the South African team doctor concerning the tests. From Johannesburg, Jonah Fisher reports.

At a news conference in Pretoria, Leonard Chuene, the president of Athletics South Africa said he'd ignored the team doctor’s advice to withdraw Caster Semenya from the world championships. Mr. Chuene also confirmed for the first time that gender tests had been carried out in South Africa and admitted repeatedly lying on the subject. To protect the athletes’ confidentiality, he said, the results of those tests have yet to be officially confirmed, but they are thought to show that Miss Semanya has what’s called an intersex condition that would prevent her competing in women’s events.

A ceasefire called by the Yemeni government in its conflict with Shiah rebels in the north of the country has failed to take hold and fighting is reported to be continuing. The government had offered a conditional truce to mark the end of the month of Ramadan. Sebastian Nasha reports.

This is the second ceasefire in the past couple of weeks but appears to have disintegrated no sooner than it was announced. The Yemeni government said it was instituting the ceasefire to show respect for the Islamic holiday of Eid which begins on Sunday. It also said it was responding to international concern which has grown after a government air raid on Wednesday on a camp that people are displaced by the fighting. Witnesses say more than 80 people were killed, prompting denunciations of a fighting from the UN and the US. But within hours of the latest truce being announced, reports were coming in of continuing clashes.

The Columbian authorities have extradited to the United States a Marxist rebel leader, Nancy Conde Rubio, who’s accused of running an extensive supply chain for the guerrillas of the FARC. Charles Scanlon reports from Miami.

Heavily armed soldiers put Nancy Conde Rubio and another rebel leader on a plane belonging to the US Drug Enforcement Administration. She’ll be tried in the United States on terrorism charges. Better known by the nom de guerre Doris Adriana, she’s alleged to have orchestrated shipments of drugs to the United States as well as the supply of weapons and other necessities to the rebels. The Columbian security services are reported to have intercepted her telephone conversations, information that led to the dramatic jungle rescue of 15 hostages including Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans.

The body governing competitive swimming in the US has voted overwhelmingly to institute an almost immediate ban on high-tech swimsuits which can give wearers an unfair advantage by increasing buoyancy. The move comes three months ahead of what's expected to be a similar ruling by the world governing body FINA.

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An organizer of a Gay Pride march planned for Serbia has criticized the government’s decision to cancel the event. Officials called off the parade which was due to take place in Belgrade on Sunday after saying they could not guarantee the safety of those taking part. But the organizer Majda Puacha said the authority has bowed to pressure from those who opposed the march. From Belgrade, Mark Lowan reports.

Members of the organizing committee of the parade were summoned to the Prime Minister's office on Saturday morning to be told that it could not go ahead in the location originally planned due to security concerns. An alternative area was suggested further from the city center, which the organizers rejected. 5000 police officers were to have been deployed to control an event labeled high risk by the interior minister after a recent wave of homophobic graffiti and direct threats from ultranationalist groups to break up the parade.

President Lech Kaczynski of Poland has announced two days of national mourning for 13 miners who died in an explosion at a coal mine in the south of the country. On Monday and Tuesday, flags will fly at half-mast and many cultural events will be canceled. Dozens of other miners are still in hospital.

The French government has been holding emergency talks with farmers after more than a thousand of them dumped millions of liters of milk in fields on Friday and protested their slumping dairy prices. Milk producers say that milk prices have fallen so low that they are selling their milk at about half its production cost. And they say that an EU plan to end production quotas could drive prices down even further. The government on Monday will meet banks and insurers to discuss further support.

An Asian black bear has been shot dead after attacking a group of tourists at a bus station in central Japan. A local news agency said four people were seriously injured in the attack in Takayama in Gifu Prefecture. The bear, just under a meter and a half tall, was later trapped in a souvenir shop and shot by hunters.

BBC News.