BBC news 2010-09-16 加文本

BBC news 2010-09-16

BBC News with Jonathan Izard.

One of the Pope’s former senior advisors says he won’t be accompanying the Pontiff on his historic visit to Britain, which begins on Thursday, because of illness. The announcement follows the publication of an interview in which the advisor, Cardinal Walter Kasper, said “when you landed at London’s Heathrow Airport, you sometimes think you’ve arrived in a Third World country”. A spokesman said the Cardinal had been misunderstood and the comments were not negative in intent. David Willey reports from Rome.

Cardinal Kasper, who’s 77, has just retired as head of the Vatican department which deals with relations with other Christian churches. The cardinal had been invited by the Pope to join the party of thirty or so senior Vatican officials accompanying him this week on a state visit. The cardinal’s private secretary told me that the cardinal had had a bad attack of gout, but the cancellation of his name from the Pope’s entourage came after publication of an interview he gave last week to a German magazine, in which he talked of an “aggressive new atheism” spreading throughout Britain.

The French government has made more angry comments about the criticism by the European Commission of France’s expulsion of Roma migrants. The French European affairs minister, Pierre Lellouche, attacked comments by the EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding. The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said Ms Reding had his support. Oana Lungescu reports from Brussels.

Both Paris and Brussels have been calling for calm, but the war of words over the Roma continues. Jose Manuel Barroso said the justice commissioner had his personal backing, but the president of the European Commission suggested that Viviane Reding was wrong to mention the war. What seems to have angered France most is Mrs Reding’s apparent comparison between the persecution of Jews and Gypsies in Nazi-occupied France and today’s expulsions of the Roma. “That unseemly blunder”, came back the repost from the French minister for Europe, Pierre Lellouche

The Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has announced that he intends to run for the presidency in next year’s election. Writing on the social networking site Facebook, Mr Jonathan said his pledge was to promise less and deliver more. Mr Jonathan took over as president in May last year, following the death of his predecessor, Umaru Yar'Adua.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders have had a second day of Middle East peace negotiations. The American Middle East envoy George Mitchell said the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas had tackled the issues that lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict upfront.

“I will say that the two leaders are not leaving the tough issues to the end of their discussions. We take this as a strong indicator of their belief that peace is possible and of their desire to conclude an agreement.”

Mr Mitchell said negotiators would meet next week to prepare the next round of leadership talks.

World News from the BBC.

Election officials in Guinea say the second round of the presidential election due to be held on Sunday will be postponed. The officials, talking to journalists in Conakry, said they would meet on Thursday to decide a new date. The second round had been in doubt all week after days of clashes between rival supporters of the former Guinean Prime Minister Cellou Diallo and his opponent Alpha Conde.

A former senior member of the Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka has said he now believes their decades-long war against the government was “a waste of people’s lives”. Velayutham Dayanidhi told the BBC what the Tamil people wanted was education, and the war had little popular support. Mr Dayanidhi surrendered to Sri Lankan forces just before the civil war ended. He was released on bail a year ago and is now living in Jaffna, one of the Tamil Tiger’s former strongholds.

One of the drills being used to bore a hole to rescue 33 miners trapped underground in Chile has been brought back into use after it broke last Thursday. Part of the drill had broken off when it hit an obstruction. Gideon Long reports.

The engineers are digging two escape tunnels for the men, and plan to start on a third one soon. Work on the second of the tunnels is going particularly well. Rene Aguilar, one of the chief engineers at the site, said he expected the drill to reach the area where the miners are sheltering this weekend. Then the engineers will haul the drill up to the surface and start digging again to widen the shaft until it’s big enough to serve as an escape route. Aguilar said the team expected to rescue the men in early November.

The US government says it’s requiring oil and gas companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico to plug thousands of non-producing wells and dismantle hundreds of unused platforms. The Interior Secretary said the move would prevent potential leaks at wells that may have been abandoned for decades. The order comes nearly five months after an explosion at a BP well caused the worst ecological catastrophe in recent American history.

BBC News.