BBC news 2010-07-31 加文本

BBC news 2010-07-31

BBC News with Jim Lee

The founder of the website that leaked 90,000 classified documents on the Afghanistan war has rejected accusations by US officials that he has blood on his hands. Julian Assange of Wikileaks told the BBC there was no evidence to back up US concerns that any of its informants have been killed as a result of the leaks. He accused the Pentagon of trying to distract attention from the lives that were being lost in the war.

"One must consider why the Pentagon is focusing on the hypothetical blood that, it says, might be on our hands - although there is no evidence of that - compared to the 20,000 lives that have been lost in Afghanistan that are documented and exposed by our material."

Hundreds of people in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been killed by monsoon floods which have left large areas underwater. More than 400 people have died in northwestern Pakistan, while across the border in Afghanistan over 60 are dead. Lyse Doucet has been travelling through some of the worst-affected regions in Pakistan.

Women and children huddled together on damp bundles of clothing, rescued from the rushing torrents of water that swept away hundreds of mud-brick homes. All roads leading south are now cut off. Across vast swathes of land, villages have disappeared. Even in the capital Peshawar, tens of thousands of people are now homeless. We visited the largest fruit and vegetable market in this part of Pakistan and saw a new lake dotted with overturned trucks with cargo still unloaded and the canvas roofs of submerged stalls.

The Greek government is to use the army and navy to break a lorry drivers' strike which has led to shortages of fuel and food in the country. The drivers have said their strike will continue despite a government emergency order designed to force them back to work. Malcolm Brabant reports from Athens.

The lorry drivers' refusal to call off the strike has been the most serious challenge to the government during Greece's eight-month-long financial crisis. The union leaders wanted to test whether the government's tough talk was just a bluff, and the Prime Minister George Papandreou has now demonstrated that he is deadly serious. In a country with very fresh memories of the military dictatorship, it is an enormously grave step to break a strike with the army. What it means is that army tankers will now go to blockaded petrol refineries and will deliver fuel to strategic places, such as hospitals and ports.

Prosecutors in Uganda have charged three Kenyans with multiple counts of murder in connection with the bomb attacks in Kampala which killed 76 football fans as they watched the World Cup final. The men made a brief appearance in a magistrates court in the Ugandan capital on Friday, but were not required to answer the charges because the case can only be heard in the High Court. The Somali Islamist group al-Shabab said it was behind the attacks.

World News from the BBC

A senior official in Beijing says that China has overtaken Japan to become the second biggest economy in the world. China's chief currency regulator made the claim on a government website. Mark Gregory has more details.

Another milestone is passed in China's ascent to economic superpower status. Well, probably, it's generally agreed that China nearly overtook Japan to become the second biggest economy last year. So few economists would dispute the claim made by the head of China's foreign currency regulator that now this landmark moment really has been reached. But it's not backed by any new data nor confirmed by international bodies like the IMF or World Bank.

The UN Security Council has removed five members of the Taliban from its sanctions blacklist. The five include a former ambassador to the United Nations and the author of a book on the Taliban. They'll no longer be subject to an asset freeze and travel ban. The BBC UN correspondent says the move comes after pressure from the Afghan government to take more Taliban names off the list to promote reconciliation.

The largest of Colombia's left-wing rebel groups, the Farc, says it's willing to talk to the new Colombian government. In a video message, the Farc leader using his alias "Alfonso Cano" said the Marxist rebel group was willing to search for political solutions to its 46-year-old conflict with the Colombian state. The President-elect Juan Manuel Santos has in the past ruled out any dialogue unless the Farc released scores of hostages they are holding.

A new study of wildlife in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine has contradicted earlier reports that animals were thriving there. After a three-year study of animal numbers in the 30-kilometre area, American and French researchers concluded that radiation from the nuclear disaster in 1986 were still having a negative effect.

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