BBC news 2010-02-07 加文本

2010-02-07 BBC

BBC News with Jonathan Izard.

Some of the heaviest snowstorms for decades have struck the eastern United States, paralysing air and road transport and bringing large parts of the capital Washington to a standstill. Power lines are down across a wide area, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity. All flights out of Washington's National Airport have been cancelled, along with most flights out of the main international airport in Virginia State. The governors of Virginia, Maryland and Delaware have declared states of emergency. Weather officials are advising people to prepare to stay at home for up to five days. Imtiaz Tyab reports.

Although the snow is still falling, the hard work of clearing it is already under way. Workers have taken to the streets to begin the back-breaking task of digging up the capital despite the fact weather forecasters have said an additional five centimeters of snow will be added to the already 30 on the ground every hour. The US media have jokingly dubbed this storm, likely to be the worst in 90 years, the Snowmageddon. And while the snowstorm has shown no sign of slowing down, government officials are already trying to figure out how to pay for the clean-up.

The head of the United Nations nuclear agency, Yukiya Amano, has called for dialogue on Iran's nuclear programme to be accelerated after talks with the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. The United States, Britain and Germany have all expressed scepticism about comments by Mr. Mottaki on Friday that Iran was very close to agreeing a deal to send its uranium abroad in exchange for enriched nuclear fuel. Our defence and security correspondent Nick Childs reports from Munich.

There was certainly a flurry of excitement here in Munich when Iran's foreign minister talked of a nuclear deal being close, but still no sign of anything new in terms of substance in this stand-off. Even though between them, the IAEA chief and the foreign minister said their latest talks here had been very good and interesting. The head of the UN watchdog insisted, as far as he was concerned, dialogue is continuing. All this seems likely to reinforce Western scepticism, a belief that Iran is playing for time and trying to deflect the push for tougher UN sanctions.

Voting has officially ended in the south-eastern
Nigerian state of Anambra after an election marked by angry scenes and long delays. Many polling stations opened hours late and there were confrontations as voters discovered their names were not on the electoral register. Caroline Duffield reports from Lagos.

In polling station after polling station, voters discovered their names had not been properly registered by the authorities. Some registers had only two or four names on them. At Arama junction wall, there were reports of angry crowds forcing officials to write down their names before casting votes. At polling station 14, in an electoral local government area, BBC reporters saw a crowd of 15 to 20 young men burst in and steal the ballot box. That happened in front of unarmed police officers.

BBC News.

The finance ministers of the world's major industrialized countries say they are committed to cancelling their bilateral debts to Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake. The G7 countries also said they would continue to work towards more general international debt relief to Haiti. Before the earthquake, much of Haiti's debt of 1.2 billion dollars was cancelled.

Police in Portugal are continuing to carry out controlled detonations to destroy half a ton of explosives which they found at a house in western Portugal on Friday. Police found the cache after launching a search for two suspects in a van who had fled from a checkpoint near the town of Obidos. Alison Roberts reports from Lisbon.

The half ton cache of explosives at a house in Obidos in western Portugal is one of the largest such finds outside Spain and the first in Portugal. Police said it points to ETA using bases in the country to organize bombings in Spain. The two suspects linked with the house remain at large, possibly police said, with two accomplices. Police said the house had recently received many visitors suggesting a broader ETA structure in Portugal.

The Palestinian Hamas movement has denied apologizing for the deaths of Israeli civilians during the Gaza conflict last year. Hamas said in a report to the United Nations on Wednesday that it regretted harm to Israeli civilians, but it said this didn't amount to an apology, and that Israel had caused the violence by attacking Palestinians. The report was part of the Palestinian response to a UN inquiry that accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during the conflict.

The South African President Jacob Zuma has made an apology for fathering the child of a woman to whom he was not married. In a statement, Mr. Zuma said he deeply regretted the pain he had caused to his family and to the African National Congress, and he reaffirmed his commitment to the family as an institution. Mr. Zuma is a Zulu traditionalist who believes in polygamy and has three wives. The child, born last year, is Mr. Zuma's 20th.

BBC News.