BBC news 2009-11-17 加文本

BBC 2009-11-17


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BBC News with Ally Macue.

The United Nations nuclear agency says questions still need to be answered about Iran's recently declared nuclear site at Qom. A report from the inspectors says Iran's failure to declare the uranium enrichment plant earlier raises questions about the existence of other nuclear secrets. The news came as Russia pulled a brake on its involvement with Iran's nuclear program, delaying the startup of a nuclear power station that's built in southern Iran. Richard Galpin reports.
The Energy Minister, Sergei Shmatko, said the Bushehr plant would not start operations this year, due to what he called technical reasons. The announcement comes at an acutely sensitive time, as international pressure mounts on Iran over its nuclear program. Many western countries suspect Tehran's ultimate goal is to build a nuclear weapon, but Iran denies this. Russia has a key role to play in the growing crisis. It's offered to enrich most of Iran's current stockpile of uranium, a plan which will buy time for the international community to find out more about the purpose of Iran’s nuclear program.

The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has offered to host an international conference in London early next year to discuss the way forward for Afghanistan. In a speech, Mr. Brown reiterated calls for President Hamid Karzai to take early action to combat corruption, and he said the international community needed to identify a process for gradually transferring territory to full Afghan control.

The space shuttle, Atlantis, has been launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida and is heading for a rendezvous with the International Space Station. It's carrying supplies and a consignment of worms for scientific research. Madeleine Morris reports.
Caenorhabditis elegans may be only a millimeter in length, but size doesn't matter when it comes to space. We human share up to 80% of our DNA with our invertebrate cousins, normally to be found feeding in rubbish tips, making them a reasonable subject for space experiments. The payload of a million microscopic worms, which come mainly from Japan and the UK, will be used to test different ways of preventing muscle atrophy in astronauts.

A Zambian newspaper editor has been acquitted of pornography charges after sending government ministers pictures of a woman giving birth in a hospital car park. The incident took place during a nurses' strike and the baby died. The Zambian president described the photographs as pornographic, but Chansa Kabwela said she wanted to raise awareness of the effects of the strike that paralyzed the country's hospitals.
"I was merely notifying or bringing to the attention of the authorities the desperate situation at the hospitals. And I couldn't understand really how somebody could look at that picture and be able to see pornography in it."
The magistrate in the case said he had nothing to indicate that the photographs were obscene.

This is Ally Macue with the latest World News from the BBC in London.

The Palestinian authority says it's sought the backing of European Union for its plan to have the United Nations recognize an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank in Gaza, despite continued Israeli occupation. The chief Palestinian negotiator said they would seek the support of all members of the international community. Israel has warned against any unilateral steps by the Palestinians.

The head of the United Nations food agency, Jacques Diouf, says he’s not satisfied with the closing declaration of the World Food Summit in Rome. He says the declaration committing the world to what's called a new partnership to combat hunger isn’t specific enough. David Loyn reports.
Dr Diouf said he was not in the room when negotiators from across the world finalized the declaration that's been rubber stamped to the Food Summit in Rome. But he said he was not satisfied with it, as it did not include targets either for the amount of spending on agriculture or a date to eradicate hunger in the world. This is an unusually frank admission from an international civil servant, and reveals some frustration that the political impetus to increase spending on agriculture after the food price shocks at the end of 2007 may have been lost.

Kenyan government officials have started to search the country’s largest forest, the Mau Forest, to ensure settlers have left after a deadline for their eviction expired on Monday. Rivers and streams in the forest supply much of the country's water and the government wants to restore the ecosystem. Officials believe most of the settlers have now left. However our BBC correspondent who visited the area said many residents had nowhere else to go.

The German carmaker Mercedes Benz has bought a controlling stake in the British-based Formula One motor racing team, Brawn GP. The team won this year's championships for both drivers and constructors. The chairman of Mercedes said that from next year, Brawn would race as the Mercedes Grand Prix team.

BBC News.