BBC news 2009-11-10 加文本

BBC 2009-11-10


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BBC News with Jerry Schmitt.

World leaders have been speaking in Berlin at special ceremonies to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which changed the political face of Europe. After a day of celebrations attended by tens of thousands of people, the leaders met at the Brandenburg Gate in the centre of the city. In a video message from Washington, President Obama said the people of Berlin and Germany had delivered their own rebuke to tyranny and oppression and had struck out for their freedom.

“Let us never forget November 9th, 1989, nor the sacrifices that made it possible. Let us sustain the friendship across the Atlantic that must never be broken and together let us keep the light of freedom burning bright for all who live in the darkness of tyranny and believe in the hope for a brighter day. Thank you.”

President Medvedev of Russia said the fall of the wall had helped Russia and Germany put their enmity behind them. And Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was brought up in East Germany, said the night the wall came down was the fulfillment of a dream. After the speeches, Berliners toppled a chain of giant dominoes along the path of the wall, which once divided the city.

The European Naval Force patrolling off the Horn of Africa says Somali pirates have launched their longest-range attack to date, nearly 2,000 kilometres east of the capital, Mogadishu. Nick Childs reports.

The international naval forces patrolling off the Horn of Africa will have mixed feelings about this new record and welcome in some ways perhaps inevitable, but also they’ll argue a new sign of the success that they believe they are having in forcing pirates further out to sea. According to the EU Naval Force, the Hong Kong-registered oil tanker, BW Lion, was attacked by two fast skiffs firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. The tanker apparently managed to evade the attacks and there have been no reported casualties.

Five months after general elections, Lebanon finally has a new government. President Michel Suleiman has announced the formation of the national unity cabinet after being given a list of ministers by the Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri, who reached the deal with the Hezbollah-led opposition on Friday. Our Beirut correspondent, Natalia Antelava, reports.

According to the new power-sharing formula, Saad Hariri who leads the US-backed coalition will have 15 ministers in the new government. The opposition led by Hezbollah and backed by Iran and Syria now has ten ministerial seats and the remaining five posts are named by the president. Those five seats could make a real difference because it’s the first time in Lebanon’s recent history that neither of the country’s two main rivals will have the veto power and many here welcome the news that President Suleiman, who’s seen as more of a neutral figure, will play a role of an arbiter.

World News from the BBC.

A powerful hurricane that’s wreaked havoc across Central America has now been downgraded. Hurricane Ida is now a tropical storm that’s heading for the US mainland. Despite being downgraded, residents along America’s Gulf Coast have been warned to prepare for the worst. And in El Salvador, a major search and rescue effort continues. Our Miami correspondent, Andy Gallagher reports.

It may no longer be a hurricane, but Tropical Storm Ida still poses a serious threat to America’s Gulf Coast. Schools in the far west of Florida have been closed as residents were advised to seek shelter. The storm is still sustaining winds of 110 kilometres an hour, making the threat of tidal surges very real. Earlier heavy rain caused in part by Hurricane Ida triggered floods and mudslides in El Salvador that killed more than 120 people. The areas around El Salvador’s capital of the central province of San Vicente were hit hardest.

South Africa’s plans for football’s World Cup next year have been dealt a blow with the suggestion that the planned high-speed rail link between Johannesburg Airport and the city’s commercial centre may not be ready in time. A spokeswoman for the rail link Gautrain told the BBC that the 3.5-billion dollar project will not now be operational until at least two weeks after the tournament starts in June. Her remarks followed the government’s refusal to pay the contractors an additional 180 million dollars which they’d demanded to speed up work.

Rescue workers in the Canadian Arctic say they’ve saved a teenage hunter who’d been adrift overnight on a small ice floe, having apparently fought off a polar bear. A search crew who found the 17-year-old Inuit youth from a floe measuring only 15 metres across, report that he’d shot and killed a mother bear, orphaning her two cubs. The teenager had been on a hunting expedition with an older man in the territory of Nunavut when their snowmobile broke down.

BBC News.