BBC news 2009-11-11 加文本

BBC 2009-11-11


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BBC News with Marian Marshall.

President Barack Obama has told the memorial service at the Fort Hood army base in Texas that the Untied States must never forget the 13 men and women who died in the shooting there last week. He said the killings couldn’t be justified.

“It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know, no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts. No just and loving God looks upon them with favor. For what he’s done, we know that the killer will be met with justice in this world and the next. “

The president paid tribute to those who'd not been able, as he put it, to escape the horror of war even in the comfort of home. Federal officials are looking for possible links between Major Nidal Hasan, the army psychiatrist accused of the killings and a radical Muslim cleric now living in Yemen.

Police in northwest Pakistan said at least 24 people have been killed in a bomb explosion in the town of Charsadda, north of Peshawar. More than 100 people have been injured and the death toll is expected to rise. Marian Lendsettle reports.

Peshawar’s police chief Liaqat Ali Khan said there’d been around 40 kilograms of explosive in a van which blew up outside the town’s main market, ripping apart shops and the stores of street venders. The blast happened during the afternoon shopping rush and the area was particularly crowded. No one has said they were responsible for the attack. It is the third bomb in as many days in the Peshawar region and the government blames this increase in violence on the Pakistan Taliban.

Opposition parties in Turkey have delayed the planned announcement by the government of its plans for the mainly Kurkish southeast of the country. Interior Minister Besir Atalay ran out of time to present the measures to parliament after nationalist M.P.s geared and waved pictures of modern Turkey’s founder Ataturk. Jonathan Head reports.

The measures are expected to allow much wider use of the Kurdish language and to improve human rights monitoring in the southeast, important requirements for Turkey’s bid to join the European Union. Right now, Kurdish politicians are routinely prosecuted just for using their own language during election campaigns. All of that could now change. However, the military has set out a number of  red lines which it says the government must not cross, one of which is the general amnesty requested by the PKK. This is a very sensitive issue in a country which for decades denied it even had a Kurdish minority.

Saudi Arabia has said it will continue its offensive against Yemeni Shiite rebels until they pull further back from its border. The Saudi Deputy Defense Minister said air attacks wouldn’t be halted until the rebels had retreated tens of kilometers inside Yemen. Earlier the rebels said Saudi planes had bombed several villages near the border, killing two women.

World News from the BBC.

The Russian government has admitted that parts of the country’s police force have, in fact, been turned into criminal businesses. The statement, which comes on Russia’s National Police Day, follows an internet video in which a senior policeman in southern Russia appealed to the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to tackle police corruption. From Moscow, here is Richard Galpin.

It’s highly unusual for a policeman to speak out so openly.And this clearly had a major impact holding a packed news conference in Moscow on Tuesday. He said he wants to meet the Prime Minister of Vladimir Putin to ensure there’s a proper investigation to restore the honor and dignity of the police force. The Interior Minister has announced that any policeman accused of committing a serious crime will face prosecution.

United Nations says at least 10,000 people in El Salvador now need urgent food aid after flooding and mudslides devastated crops and left thousands homeless. At least 140 people died in the torrential rains, nearly 50 of them children. Steven Gibbs reports.

The torrential rains in El Salvador washed away crops across the region so thousands of survivors of the initial floods are now confronted with a secondary problem, the dangerous lack of a stable food supply. The World Food Program hopes to deliver 90 tons of aid to the area in the coming days but access remains a major challenge. Civil Defense authorities say 18 bridges and many more roads have been destroyed. Heavy machinery has been brought in to try to reach villages which had been cut off for days.

Steven Gibbs.

The United Nations General Assembly has declared July the 18th as Mandela Day to mark the contribution of Nelson Mandela to world freedom. The resolution was introduced by the South African ambassador. He described the former president, who is 91, as an icon and a symbol of hope whose life had mirrored the ideals of the United Nations itself.

BBC News.