BBC news 2010-06-03 加文本

2010-06-03 BBC

BBC News with Zoe Diamond

A taxi driver has gone on a rampage in northwest England, shooting dead 12 people and wounding 25 others before killing himself. Police said they were investigating 30 crime scenes. They said the gunman murdered a colleague before driving through Cumbria firing at other people. Our reporter Chris Stewart is in Whitehaven where some of the killings took place.

We've had hundreds of officers involved throughout the day in the manhunts, and now we have dozens of detectives working on the investigation. And at the moment, we simply don't know what led to this series of crimes throughout what is normally an extremely peaceful county, a county of where the crime rate is much lower than the national average. And this is a very peaceful town. Whitehaven is a harbour town, the home to 25,000 people, and that actually makes it quite a large town in this part of the world.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defended the raid by his country's forces on ships trying to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. He accused foreign critics of the raid of hypocrisy and said the blockade would continue. Mr Netanyahu said Israeli soldiers involved in the mission were the real victims.

"They were met with a vicious mob; they were stabbed; they were clubbed; they were fired upon. I talked to some of these soldiers. One was shot in the stomach; one was shot in the knee. They were going to be killed, and they had to act in self-defence. It's very clear to us that the attackers had prepared their violent action in advance. They were members of an extremist group that has supported international terrorist organizations."

Several planes carrying activists seized from the ships have taken off from Israel bound for Turkey and Greece. The bodies of nine people in the Israeli raid are also being repatriated.

A United Nations expert has warned that targeted killings including attacks of unmanned aircraft or drones pose a challenge to the international rule of law. In a report for the UN, Philip Alston, an expert on extrajudicial killings, says that rules designed to protect the right of life are being damaged by what he calls “Washington's ill-defined license to kill without accountability”. Jonathan Marcus reports.

Unmanned drones carrying bombs or guided munitions are now the weapon of choice in Washington's war against terror. But in time, many other countries will develop such capabilities, and Professor Philip Alston argues that much more needs to be done to provide clear rules to govern the use of these weapons. The US is of course not the only country to employ targeted killings. Israel and Russia too are also mentioned in the report, but it is Washington's extensive use of drones that makes the US what he calls “the most prolific user of targeted killings”.

The oil company BP has run into difficulties in its latest attempt to stem the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It's using robot submarines to cut through a ruptured pipe on the seabed in order to cap it, but the blade of the saw became stuck.

World News from the BBC

Prosecutors in Germany are investigating accusations that the country's senior Roman Catholic Archbishop Robert Zollitsch ignored a case of child abuse by a priest in the 1960s. Archbishop Zollitsch is also accused of later making sure the priest was given another job at the monastery where the abuse allegedly took place. The archbishop has denied any wrongdoing.

A statue of King Shaka has been removed from the airport named after him in the South African city of Durban following complaints about the way he's portrayed. King Shaka, who founded the Zulu Kingdom, is traditionally depicted bearing weapons. Dee Sebastian has the details.

The statue which was unveiled a month ago at the new airport shows King Shaka who famously took on the British in the 19th century with his arms outstretched surrounded by cattle, and that's what's caused the protests. The current Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini is reported to have described the statue as a king more like a herdboy than the fierce hunter-warrior of Zulu folklore. Now a team of academics, historians and members of the Zulu royal household will debate a new look for Shaka, and a revised statue will be unveiled in about a month.

Thousands of football fans in Zimbabwe have crammed into the National Stadium to watch their team take on Brazil. It's the first time since Zimbabwe's independence in 1980 that a non-African side has played there. The Brazilians were warming up for the World Cup finals which start later this month. Brazil won comfortably by three goals to nil.

A selection of memorabilia from Britain's wartime leader Winston Churchill has been auctioned for more than 840,000 dollars in London. The sale included an official diary recording meetings with Roosevelt and Stalin and a letter in which Churchill rejected a suggestion that he make peace with Hitler. The items were part of a wider collection belonging to the US publishing magnate Steve Forbes who amassed them over three decades.

BBC World News.