BBC news 2010-10-15 加文本

2010-10-15 BBC

BBC News with Nick Kelly

President Sebastian Pinera of Chile has promised new legislation to try to prevent any repeat of the accident which left 33 miners trapped underground for more than two months. Speaking after meeting the miners, who were brought to the surface on Wednesday, Mr Pinera promised a radical change that would put workers' safety at the heart of Chilean culture. From Chile, Caroline Hawley.

The miners met with the president in dressing gowns, still wearing the special sunglasses they'd been given to protect their eyes and help them adjust to the light. Sebastian Pinera said that the government would now carry out a review of safety measures at all mines in the country that never again would miners have to work in the conditions as San Jose. After the extraordinary events of the past two days, Camp Hope on the edge of the mine is now being dismantled. The last relatives are tidying and packing up - their vigils no longer needed; their prayers met.

Record numbers of homes have been repossessed in the United States amid a continuing debate on whether lenders are properly managing the process of foreclosure. A company tracking foreclosures says US banks repossessed more than 100,000 properties last month, the highest monthly number since the beginning of the sub-prime mortgage crisis two years ago. Senior US legal officials are calling for investigation into how foreclosures are being handled.

Figures released by the American Department of Commerce show the United States politically sensitive trade imbalance with China has reached an all-time high. Mark Gregory reports.

The trend was driven by surging imports from China, with the bilateral deficit in US trade with China also at its highest-ever level. The timing could hardly be more sensitive. On Friday, the US Treasury will say whether it believes China is manipulating its currency to gain unfair trade advantage.

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told a huge rally of Hezbollah supporters in southern Lebanon that the country's resistance proved itself stronger than all Israel's weapons. From the rally in Bint Jbeil, near the Israeli border, Jeremy Bowen.

During the 2006 war, a well-planned defensive operation by Hezbollah fighters in Bint Jbeil stopped the Israeli invaders capturing and holding the town even though they were barely across their own border wire. President Ahmadinejad's presence here on the Israeli border and in Beirut too has been condemned by the Americans. Israel said it was confirmation that Lebanon had become an Iranian protectorate.

A Malaysian astrophysicist Mazlan Othman has denied reports in British media that she has the biggest job in the world, the United Nations ambassador for space aliens. She says there is no such job title, but if aliens were to get in touch, the UN would be the ideal place to start. Ms Othman said life in outer space was much more likely to mean bacteria than little green men.

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A senior member of the military government in Niger has been released from detention a day after he was arrested. The officer, Colonel Abdoulaye Bague, who is the second-in-command in the administration, is now at his home in the capital Niamey. Niger's former President Mamadou Tandja was overthrown in a coup in February.

The BBC has obtained unusually direct testimony about a political assassination in the Democratic Republic of Congo allegedly committed by soldiers loyal to a militia leader wanted by the International Criminal Court. An anonymous source said he was speaking on a mobile phone to an army officer just before he was shot dead. Here is Mark Doyle.

Political killings are frequent in eastern Congo, but convincing detailed accounts are rare. My source said an associate of his, a senior army officer, was driving to a nightclub with men loyal to the militia leader Bosco Ntaganda. The officer phoned my source from inside the car and then left the line open. The officer said "Why are you taking me to Bosco's house? I know you want to kill me." Minutes later, he was dead. The International Criminal Court has declared Bosco Ntaganda a wanted man, but the Congolese government may not have the political will or the military muscle to arrest him.

The legal tussle over the sale of Liverpool Football Club is one step closer to being resolved. The High Court in London has ordered its current owners to stop using the American legal system to try to block the sale, but they have responded by taking their case back to a court in Texas. Liverpool's directors want to sell the club to New England Sports Ventures, who own the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

And President Alan Garcia of Peru has denied slapping a young man who insulted him when he visited a hospital last weekend. The alleged victim says he was struck by the president and then beaten up by his bodyguards after he called him corrupt. Mr Garcia denied he had hit the man.

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