BBC news 2010-04-29 加文本

2010-04-29 BBC

BBC News with Neil Nunes

Officials in Germany say the total financial aid package for Greece could be more than double the 60 billion dollars that was previously expected. The head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn is in Berlin trying to persuade Germany to agree to the financial rescue plan. He said the deal needed to be implemented quickly as the situation was getting worse every day and could affect other European countries. But the German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin needed to be certain that Greece was serious about spending cuts.

"This is about the stability of the euro area as a whole and we will not withdraw from this responsibility. The precondition, however, is that Greece will accept an ambitious austerity program so that the trust of the financial markets can be restored."
Street protests and strikes have broken out in Greece over the government's handling of the financial crisis. The country's labor minister said he had rejected the proposal by the IMF and the EU for further cuts in public spending.

The United States Federal Reserve is to keep its main interest rate at near zero even though it says the economy is strengthening. The Reserve, the US central bank, said it expected the rate would stay very low for an extended period.

The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said sorry to a woman he had been caught on microphone describing as "bigoted" during campaigning for the general election. Mr Brown spent 45 minutes at her home and told reporters she had accepted his apology. The woman, Gillian Duffy, had challenged him on immigration and crime. Here is our political editor Nick Robinson.
That was a disaster. Never has Gordon Brown spoken truer words. It was, though, not the public encounter with Mrs Duffy of Rochdale, but those private comments which caused all the problems. They highlight a vast gulf between the prime minister's behavior and attitude in public and in private - warm, attentive and concerned on camera; angry, dismissive and disdainful when off it. They could ignite a publicly explosive issue of immigration and they involve the leader of the Labour Party insulting this sort of traditional Labour voter which the party so badly needs to hold on to.

An inquest in London has recorded a verdict of suicide in the death of the fashion designer, Alexander McQueen, who was found dead in his flat in February. The coroner's court concluded that Mr McQueen hanged himself after taking a mixture of cocaine, tranquilizers and sleeping pills. It heard that the designer had a history of depression.

The first offshore wind farm in the United States has won government approval after years of opposition from environmentalist and indigenous tribes. The billion-dollar project - 130 turbines each are 120 metres high will be built off the Massachusetts coast.

World News from the BBC

The acting President of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan has ordered the country's election chief to step down. The chairman of the Independent National Election Commission Maurice Iwu is to leave with immediate effect. Here is Richard Hamilton.
This move is a further sign of Goodluck Jonathan asserting his authority. In March, he sacked his national security adviser and dissolved the cabinet, replacing several ministers who were close to the ailing President Umaru Yar'Adua. In a BBC interview earlier this month, he promised that from now on elections would be free and fair, saying the composition of the election commission would be reviewed. "If we find people wanting, we will make changes," he warned.

Scientists say they are closer to learning how life started on earth with the discovery of water and organic compounds on an asteroid. Two groups of scientists using a NASA telescope detected a thin film of ice and organic material in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Pallab Ghosh has this report.
Unlike their more illustrious celestial cousins, comets, which hurtle toward the sun and generate a furry tail, asteroids have a less glamorous image in popular culture, but that may begin to change with the discovery of an asteroid which has frozen water all over its surface as well as carbon-based compounds. These are two of the building blocks of life. And if this is typical, the discovery suggests that asteroids as well as comets may have played a large part in bringing the elements of life to earth.

China's women's gymnastic team has been stripped off a bronze medal it won at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney because one of its gymnasts was underage. The International Olympic Committee acted after an investigation found that the gymnast Dong Fangxiao was only 14 at the time. Competitors must be at least 16 in the Olympic year to be eligible.

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