BBC news 2010-10-12 加文本

2010-10-12 BBC

BBC News with David Legge

The commander of United States and Nato forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, has ordered an investigation into the death of a kidnapped British aid worker killed during a rescue attempt on Friday. His announcement comes after the US military revealed that the aid worker Linda Norgrove may have been killed by a grenade thrown by American troops trying to rescue her. From Kabul, Nicholas Witchell has this report.

For 48 hours over the weekend, officials here had spoken about an explosion initiated by one of the extremists, possibly from a suicide bomb vest. Quite why it took the Americans so long to verify the accuracy of the picture they were giving isn't clear, but this morning they suddenly disclosed that surveillance footage together with discussions with members of the team meant that they could not now conclusively determine the cause of Ms Norgrove's death. There will now be a joint investigation by the American and British military, which is likely to take several days.

In Chile, the first test has been carried out of the narrow steel capsule that will be used to try to rescue 33 miners who have been trapped underground for the past two months. Caroline Hawley is at the mine in San Jose.

Preparations are now moving ahead swiftly for the operation to winch the miners out of what they described as their underground hell. Not only is the escape shaft ready, but the special capsule that was sent down to rescue the men has been tested to a depth of 610 metres, and the Mining Minister Laurence Golborne says all went well. The miners will be taken off solid food ready for their ascent and given only specially-enriched drinks. This extraordinary rescue mission is now due to begin by early Wednesday morning.

Palestinian officials have rejected an offer by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt Jewish settlement activity if the Palestinians were to recognise Israel as a Jewish state. A Palestinian official said the offer was beside the point. Wyre Davies reports from Jerusalem.

The Palestinian response was swift and unequivocal, dismissing Mr Netanyahu's suggestion out of hand. A senior negotiator said the Palestinians had long ago recognised the state of Israel, and the real issue threatening the talks was illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. The demand that Israel should be recognised explicitly as a Jewish state has long been rejected by the Palestinians, who say it discriminates against 20% of the Israeli population which is not Jewish.

The world's first official trial using human embryonic stem cells for clinical treatment has begun in the United States. Doctors at a hospital in the city of Atlanta say they have their first patient for the study which will involve the use of stem cells to treat severe spinal injuries. Opponents of the method which involves taking stem cells from human embryos argue that human embryos are destined for destruction as a result. The US government is currently fighting a legal battle to allow federal funding for stem cell research.

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Eight policemen have been killed in an attack on a police checkpoint in Mexico. At least one other officer was injured. The killings took place in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, home to one of Mexico's powerful drugs cartels.

Medical workers in the city of Aden (say southern Yemen) say two explosions of there have killed at least one person and injured eight others. The blasts within minutes of each other struck a residential area of Aden, near the grounds of a local football team.

Police in Hungary have arrested the managing director of the aluminium plant at the centre of a massive chemical spillage which has devastated several towns and villages in the west of the country. The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced the arrest and said that the company would be temporarily nationalised, and those responsible should bear the financial consequences. A government spokesman, Anna Nagy, explained why such tough action was being taken.

"This is a human fault; this is a human mistake. It was not a natural catastrophe, and the people who operated the plant need to be responsible for what happened."

Rescuers have found the body of the last person still missing, taking the total number killed to eight.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has intervened in a long-running battle for control of Iran's biggest university, paving the way for it to be taken over by the government. Ayatollah Khamenei ruled that the endowment of Azad University in Tehran, which has 1.5 million students and tens of millions of dollars in assets, was religiously illegitimate. Until now, the university has been a centre of support for the former President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, one of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's main rivals.

One of the greatest opera singers of the modern era, Joan Sutherland, has died. She was 83. Her family said her death at her home near Geneva followed a long illness. She was made a Dame in 1979, but to opera enthusiasts she was known simply as La Stupenda.

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