BBC news 2009-11-12 加文本

BBC 2009-11-12


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BBC News with Deborah Mackenzie.

Egypt has welcomed the jail sentence given by a German court to a man who murdered a pregnant Egyptian woman. In a statement the foreign ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said the life sentence, which he noted was the maximum punishment under German law, served justice and was a warning to those motivated by hate. Yolande Knell in Cairo has more.
There were alerts on state television as news of the verdict broke. This trial has been extensively covered in the Egyptian media and many Egyptian journalists travelled to Dresden to follow proceedings. Members of Marwa el-Sherbini's family and Egyptian lawyers were also in court. The fatal stabbing of Mrs. el-Sherbini in a courthouse in front of her three-year-old son and a subsequent accidental shooting of her husband by a German guard shocked Egyptians. And there was outrage at what was seen as the slow response of the German authorities to deal with claims of Islamophobia and offer their condolences.

On the day that many countries have been remembering their war dead, President Barack Obama has marked Veterans Day by reflecting on how America's treated its soldiers from previous wars. Mr. Obama was speaking after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.
"Our Vietnam veterans served with great honor. They often came home, greeted not with gratitude or support but with condemnation and neglect. That's something that will never happen again. And to those who are serving in far-flung places today, when your tour ends, when you see our flag, when you touch our soil, you will be home in an America that is forever here for you, just as you've been there for us. That is my promise, our nation's promise to you."

Later on Wednesday Mr. Obama's holding what could be his last meeting with his national security team before deciding on troop numbers for Afghanistan. The White House says four options are being considered and a senior administration source says these all involve sending more troops.

The United Nations children's agency UNICEF says nearly 200 million children under the age of five living in the developing world are stunted as a result of malnutrition. UNICEF warns that these children are likely to have a lifetime of health problems. Madeleine Morris reports.
More than 90% of children living in the developing world who have stunted growth live in Asia and Africa, according to UNICEF. There have been some improvements over the last 20 years. In 1990 nearly half of Asia's children were stunted. That’s now been cut to under a third. But in African countries one in every three children has stunted growth, little change from two decades ago. Undernutrition makes children more susceptible to potentially deadly illnesses like pneumonia and diarrhea and can impede brain development, too, making learning and working as an adult more difficult.

World News from the BBC.

An Uzbek human rights activist says he's been beaten up after helping the BBC investigate the use of child labour in Uzbekistan's cotton industry. Bakhtiyar Hamrayev says he was attacked by unidentified people within hours of the story appearing on the BBC World Service and News Website on Wednesday.

An Israeli judge has said that his country works on two fundamentally different legal enforcement levels, depending on whether crimes are committed by Jews or Arabs. The judge, Yuval Shadmi, made the comments when dismissing a case against an Arab youth accused of throwing stones at a police car. Prosecutors had wanted the Arab youth to be jailed, but the judge said Israel could not, as he put it, flog Arab ideological felons if it was going to treat their Jewish counterparts more leniently.

The computer giant Microsoft has banned thousands of people from its online gaming service. It's accusing them of modifying their gaming terminals to play pirated games. Our technology correspondent Mark Gregory reports.
Microsoft has admitted taking action against a small percentage of owners of its Xbox games machines. Reports circulating online suggest up to a million people have been affected. Microsoft says they’ve violated their terms of use by installing computer chips or other equipment that allows them to play pirate copies of computer games. As punishment, the company is denying them access to its online gaming service Xbox Live. Commentators say this is a pre-Christmas crackdown designed to deter gamers from acquiring unauthorized games in the most popular buying season.

A human rights organization in Nigeria has called on traditional African rulers to apologize for the role they played in the slave trade. The Civil Rights Congress says it's time for African leaders to copy the United States and Britain, who've already said they were sorry.

BBC News.