BBC news 2009-12-08 加文本

BBC 2009-12-08

BBC News with Sue Montgomery.
 
The United States government has declared that greenhouse gases are endangering the health of American people. The ruling means President Obama can now order cuts in emissions without having to win the backing of the US Senate, where climate change legislation is stalled. The move coincides with the climate change summit that opened today in Copenhagen. Mark Mardell reports from Washington.
The announcement had been expected for a while, but is important signal before President Obama travels to Copenhagen. At the moment, legislation restricting carbon emissions is tied up in the Senate, where it faces stiff opposition both from those who say restrictions will cost the United States in jobs and push up energy prices, and those who simply don't accept that climate change is real or man-made. If the legislation is passed at all, it won't be until next spring. But this declaration raises the possibility that if it is blocked, President Obama’s administration could simply impose new rules.
At the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit itself, the United Nations Climate Chief Yvo de Boer said countries must set an ambitious goal on lowering emissions of greenhouse gases to tackle global warming. He said the meeting would make history, but warned it needed to be the right sort of history.
 
There have been two explosions in Pakistan's second biggest city Lahore, killing at least 30 people. Eyewitnesses say the blasts went off in a popular market packed with shoppers. Aleem Maqbool reports from Islamabad.
Even in hours after the attack, the fire prevented emergency workers getting to the worst affected areas. Doctors in Lahore say many of those confirmed dead are women and children. This was the second attack in the country in a day. Earlier, ten people were killed in the Northwestern city of Peshawar when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a courthouse. This latest bloodshed takes the number of those killed to well over 400 in the last two months alone. It seems as Taliban retaliation for the Pakistani army’s offensive against them in the tribal areas close to Afghanistan.
 
Prosecutors in the United States have charged a Pakistan-born American citizen in connection with last year's attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai. The man is alleged to have carried out surveillance on potential targets ahead of the attacks, in which more than 160 people died. Electron Neil Smith reports.
David Colman Headley or Daood Gilani, as he was known until three years ago, is accused of aiding and abetting the deadly attacks in Mumbai. Charges include conspiracy to bomb public places in India and to murder in Maine. A Pakistani national, he acquired American citizenship after his name changed, subsequently traveling to India at least nine times on business visas between 2006 and 2009. Prosecutors believe his persona of the middle-aged American businessman fluent in English was a perfect cover for alleged links to banned Islamist militant groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba.
 
World News from the BBC.
 
Reports from Iran say dozens of people have been arrested after violent confrontations between security forces and anti-government demonstrators across the country. Witnesses said there'd been live gunfire in the capital Tehran. The demonstrations were led by Iranian students, angry at the disputed re-elections of President Ahmadinejad. Jon Leyne reports.
From numerous eyewitnesses, it sounds like this was one of the most widespread protests in Iran for months. Students at many universities across Iran staged demonstrations. Police and members of the government’s Basij militia tried to contain the protests within the universities. At the gates of Tehran University and several other universities, there were angry clashes. Tear gas and batons were used. Witnesses also spoke of gunfire in central Tehran. But it's not clear if anyone was shot or the guns were just fired in the air.
 
A senior British army officer has told the Iraq Inquiry in Britain that he urged the government to delay the invasion of Iraq two days before it went ahead. Major General Tim Cross said that in his view post-conflict preparations were not in place. He added that he did not believe the US was solely to blame and that Britain had not taken seriously enough the challenges that would arise after the invasion.
 
A judge in Chile has charged six people, including four doctors, in connection with the alleged killing in 1982 of the country's former president Eduardo Frei Montalva. The judge said there was now conclusive evidence that Mr. Frei, a vocal critic of the military leader Augusto Pinochet, had been poisoned in hospital after undergoing routine surgery.
 
A Western Sahara independence activist who stuck at Lanzarote Airport in Spain said she will continue her hunger strike and has refused all medical care. The woman, Aminatou Haidar, has been fasting for three weeks since she was expelled to the Spanish island by Moroccan authorities. They denied her entry to Western Sahara after she refused to classify herself as Moroccan.
 
BBC News.