BBC news 2010-03-13 加文本

2010-03-13 BBC

BBC News with Eileen MacHugh

The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sharply criticized Israel's recent decision to build new settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. Mrs Clinton told the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the move was deeply negative for US-Israeli relations and undermined trust in the peace process. Kim Ghattas reports from Washington.
It was a very rare sharp American rebuke of Israel delivered over the phone during a 43-minute long conversation. Hillary Clinton told Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel's announcement of new settler homes was a deeply negative signal about Israel's approach to the bilateral relationship. On Wednesday, the White House condemned Israel's decision. A State Department spokesperson PJ Crowley said the US had objected to both the timing and the substance of the announcement.

Pakistani police say suicide attackers have detonated two bombs in the city of Lahore, killing 45 people. About 100 others were wounded in the blasts which happened within seconds of each other and appeared to target vehicles of the Pakistani military. A series of five small blasts were heard hours later in another part of the city, causing panic as our correspondent in Pakistan Aleem Maqbool explains.
Perhaps today people are very much on edge because of what happened this morning. But you will find that people are on edge for a few hours or a couple have time to reflect, I mean, they are becoming numbers now, or even we talked about 45 people of, course as 45 families we are talking about. But you of days after a blast, and then suddenly, and they get back to normal life, and then the next blast happens, and the cycle starts again. And people don't even know even the media, the newspapers don't have a chance to release or reflect on what that means because the next blast just seems to be around the corner.

Russia's state-owned nuclear company Rosatom says the country will build 16 nuclear reactors in India. This is an addition to two reactors have already been built there by Russia. From Delhi, Sanjoy Majumder reports.
At the end of a short one-day of visit by Vladimir Putin to Delhi, Russia and India firmed their close ties which date back to the Cold War years. A number of lucrative deals were signed during the visit including ones on nuclear energy and defence. Russia is to build 16 nuclear reactors in India to be used to generate power for the energy-hungry country. The two sides also finalized an agreement over the purchase of a Russian aircraft carrier, the Admiral Gorshkov, which would be delivered to India by the end of 2012.

The new President of Chile Sebastian Pinera has said it will cost at least 30 billion dollars to rebuild the country following last month's devastating earthquake. Speaking on his first full day in office, President Pinera said his government would use loans and budgetary savings to rebuild infrastructure, homes and industry. Earlier, Mr Pinera urged his ministers to start the reconstruction without delay.

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The head of Germany's Roman Catholic's Archbishop Robert Zollitsch has apologized to victims of sexual abuse by priests. Speaking to reporters after meeting Pope Benedict at the Vatican, he said the Church in Germany was taking measures to prevent a repeat of the abuse, to give advice to victims and to investigate the allegations. Archbishop Zollitsch had been briefing the Pope on the emergence of nearly 200 cases of alleged sexual abuse of children by German priests.

Police in Buenos Aires have arrested the head of customs at Argentina's main international airport after finding hundreds of thousands of dollars hidden in a safe and shoe boxes at his home. The customs chief Carlos Mechetti is accused of running a smuggling operation.

The Portuguese parliament has voted in favor of a delayed budget aimed at reducing the deficit to the level permitted for countries which use the euro currency. As part of the budget, parliamentarians agreed on a range of spending cuts, and the Prime Minister Jose Socrates described the vote as a political victory for the country. Alison Roberts reports from Lisbon.
The government portrayed this year's budget and a medium-term austerity program yet to be submitted to parliament as key to restoring Portugal's credibility with investors. The measures for this year including a public sector wage freeze are just the first stage in plans to meet eurozone rules by slashing the deficit by 2/3 by 2013. With the government looking to extend the wage freeze until then, unions representing public sector workers are gearing up for protests and national strikes.

Londoners have had their first chance in a century and a half to walk through a revolutionary tunnel under the river Thames. It was designed by the famous engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and was in its state hailed as the 8th wonder of the world. The tunnel employed novel construction methods, making it the first tunnel anywhere to run under a navigable river.

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