BBC news 2009-09-25 加文本

BBC 2009-09-25


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BBC World News with Debora MacKenzie.

The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution aimed at stemming the spread of nuclear weapons, promoting disarmament and reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism. President Obama chairing the session said it enshrined a commitment to achieving a world without nuclear weapons. The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown described the occasion as a critical moment for world peace.

"This conference today recognizes we are at a watershed moment. The choices being made now by each nation will determine whether we face a future arm race or a future of arms control. But if we rise to this challenge, then our generation, a generation that has known all too often only the horrors of conflict and the perils of proliferation will be remembered not for the years of tension, but for years of progress."

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the United Nations General Assembly that the most urgent task facing the world is to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. He denounced the Iranian government as a barbaric regime, saying that Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was a threat to the entire world.

"Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime, perhaps they threaten only the Jews. Well, if you think that, you are wrong, dead wrong. History has shown us time and time again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many many others."

Mr. Nataniyahu also dismissed UN criticism of the Israeli offensive in Gaza earlier this year as twisted and a perversion of the truth.

Riot police in the American city of Pittsburgh have used tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters just hours before world leaders arrive for the summit of the G20 group of industrialized and developing countries. Andrew Walker reports from Pittsburgh.

A group said to be a thousand or more strong were warned by a police announcement that they should leave the vicinity, and they'd face arrest or other police action if they remained in the area more than a kilometre away from the summit venue. Some rolled rubbish bins towards the police who fired tear gas canisters at the crowd. At least some of this group were denouncing capitalism and some were displaying anarchist banners. Pittsburgh has already been disrupted by the security measures taken to protect the summit, and some schools and businesses have temporarily had to close down.

The United Nations World Food Program estimates that more than 20 million people in the Horn of Africa now need emergency food aid because of two years of poor rainfall in the region. The organization warns that cuts in its funding have made it more difficult to feed the hungry across Kenya, Somalia, Somaliland, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Ethiopia. The WFP and the Ethiopian government have asked Sudan and Somaliland if they can use their ports because congestion in Djibouti’s port is holding up the flow of relief supplies.

BBC News.

Government officials in India say they expect the number of people killed in an accident at a power plant in the central state of Chhattisgarh to rise considerably. Rescuers using cranes and heavy lifting equipment have so far recovered 26 bodies after a 100-meter high chimney being built at the site collapsed on Wednesday. About 100 men were thought to have been working in the vicinity, but the chimney crashed onto a cafeteria and offices when many more were sheltering from a storm. The Chhattisgarh Home Minister Nankiram Kanwar promised there would be an official inquiry.

"It may take another two or three days to clear the rubble. Continuous efforts have been under way since last night. The state's chief minister has ordered a judicial inquiry, and has announced a compensation of 100,000 Rupees for each family of the deceased."

Jewish groups have reacted with horror to a decision by the Kiev city authorities to build a hotel on the site of a Jewish massacre at Babi Yar, now a suburb of the city. Councillor in the Ukrainian capital have approved plans to build 30 hotels for the 2012 European Football Championships, one of them in Babiya where the Nazis killed nearly 34,000 Jews early in the Second World War. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel has said the hotel plan showed utter insensitivity to the memory of the dead.

A goalkeeper is being investigated by the Swedish Football Association after he was caught, literally, moving the goalposts during a first division game. Kim Christensen, who plays for the current leaders IFK Goteborg, was seen on television kicking the bottom of the posts inwards by about ten centimetres. After about 20 minutes, the match referee noticed that the goal was too small and moved the posts back into place. But he said that as he didn't know who'd moved them, he took no further action.

BBC News.