BBC news 2010-10-13 加文本

BBC news 2010-10-13

BBC News with Joe Macintosh

The operation to rescue the 33 miners trapped deep underground in Chile is expected to start within hours. The men have survived about 700 metres below ground for more than two months. Gideon Long reports.

Sources have told the BBC that the first man out of the ground would be Florencio Avalos, one of the most experienced of the group. His brother and brother-in-law are also trapped in the mine. He will be followed by Mario Sepulveda and then Bolivian miner, Carlos Mamani, the only non-Chilean in the group. Rescuers say it will take around an hour to get each man out. For between 10 and 20 minutes of that time, they'll be inside the escape capsule being pulled up through the 620-metre long tunnel. They'll have oxygen and intercom system so they can talk to the rescuers. The Chilean President, Sebastian Pinera, is at the mine to witness the start of the operation.

And President Pinera said lessons have to be learnt from the accident.

The miners won't be the same men who went into the mine as the ones who will come out, nor will Chile be the same country and we, the citizens of Chile won't the same people. We have learnt an important lesson. We have learnt the hard way in the face of adversity. We have learnt that with unity, faith, courage and determination and with the help of God we can do great things.

The American government has lifted a ban on deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. With more details Adam Brooks reports from Washington.

The ban on deep water drilling was imposed in April. It followed the explosion on the deep water horizon oil rig which killed 11 people and allowed vast quantities of crude oil to leak from the sea bed into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that significant progress has been made in reducing the risks associated with deep water drilling. And he said oil companies would have to demonstrate that they can comply with new stricter safety standards. The administration's been under pressure to lift the deep water drilling ban both from oil companies and from local politicians who say the local economy is suffering.

A federal judge in the United States has ordered the government to immediately stop the dismissal of homosexuals serving openly in the armed forces. For the past 17 years, there has been a Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, which means that service men and women can't admit to being homosexual for fear of dismissal.

A court in London has delayed until Wednesday a judgement with implications for the future of Liverpool Football Club. A majority of the Club's directors have agreed to a proposed takeover by the American owners of the Boston Red-Sox Baseball Team. But Liverpool's current American owners Tom Hickson, George Jones want to pursue other office. On Tuesday, two further bids for the Club emerged, one from a Singapore businessman and another from an American hedge fund.

World News from the BBC.

Police and Trade Union in France say Tuesday's nation-wide protest against changes to the state's pension system has been the biggest since the demonstrations begun earlier this month. Union official say 3.5 million people took part while the police gave a figure of 1.2 million. This was the fourth in a series of protests, described by the France's Prime Minister, Francois Fillon, as irresponsible.

The President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, has said continued unity is the only option for his country. Southern Sudanese are due to vote in January in a referendum on independence as part of the peace deal that ended the long civil war. Mr.Bashir told the parliament that although he was committed to that referendum, he believed the South would be more stable and prosperous if its state united with the North.

The head of fine arts for the Egyptian government has been found guilty of negligence over the theft of a Van Gogh painting form a museum in Cairo. He was among 11 people sentenced to 3 years in prison for security lapses. * reports from the Egyptian capital.

The Van Gogh's painting, Poppy Flowers, was stolen in August in broad daylight from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo. It was cut out of its frame and has still not been recovered. It soon emerged that surveillance cameras were not working. The Museum had reduced a number of guards and the alarms attached to each painting in the Museum were also not working. Now according to the Egyptian state news agency Maan, the head of the Cultural Minister fine art section, the Museum's director and nine other officials have been convicted of negligence and sentenced to three 3 years in prison.

The British author Howard Jacobson has won this year's Man Booker Prize for his novel The Finkler Question. The announcement was made a short time ago at ceremony in London. The prize is worth about eighty thousand dollars. The BBC Art reporter has said the book's main themes are age and death and what it means to be Jewish. However, Mr.Jacobson said he had no intension of writing a Jewish novel and the main character was a gentile.

BBC News.