BBC news 2010-11-04 加文本

BBC news 2010-11-04

BBC News with Victoria Meakin

President Obama has given his response to the Democratic Party's dramatic losses in Tuesday's mid-term elections. He said he understood the reasons why people had voted the way they had.

"Over the last two years, we've made progress, but clearly too many Americans haven't felt that progress yet, and they told us that yesterday. And as president, I take responsibility for that. What yesterday also told us is that no one party will be able to dictate where we go from here, that we must find common ground in order to set, in order to make progress on some uncommonly difficult challenges."

The Republican leader in the US House of Representatives says rolling back President Obama's health care reforms will be one of the priorities for the new Republican majority when the winners take office in January. John Boehner said the mid-term election gains for his party showed voters didn't like the expansion of the government's role.

"The American people were concerned about the government takeover of health care. I think it's important for us to lay the groundwork before we begin to repeal this monstrosity and replace it with common-sense reforms that will bring down the cost of health insurance in America."

In a new effort to address America's economic difficulties, the Federal Reserve, the country's central bank, has said it will inject $600bn into the economy by the middle of next year. The policy is known as "quantitative easing". It's the bank's second attempt to generate growth in this way. Andrew Walker reports.

The Federal Reserve will create new money and use it to buy government bonds in the financial markets. The policy is known as "quantitative easing" because it increases the quantity of money held by the banks. The aim is to reduce long-term interest rates and stimulate more spending against the background of a sluggish economic recovery. But critics say it risks causing sharply higher inflation and unsustainable increases in asset prices that might threaten financial stability in the future.

The number of people known to have died from a cholera epidemic in Haiti has risen sharply. Health officials say more than 100 people have died since Saturday, bringing the total to 442. They said there had been a 40% jump in the number of new cases. On Monday, the US Centers for Disease Control found that all the Haitian patients had the same strain of cholera.

The European Commission has called on European Union countries to draw up plans for the disposal of nuclear waste and suggested burying it deep underground was the best solution. Most EU countries have no long-term storage plans. Existing facilities can store nuclear waste for up to 100 years, but high-level waste from nuclear power plants can take a million years to decay. Under the commission's proposals, the export of nuclear waste beyond the EU would be banned.

World News from the BBC

Police in Germany have arrested at least 21 people suspected of using a far-right Internet radio station to spread neo-Nazi ideology. Federal police said the arrests were the result of almost two dozen raids across the country. Prosecutors are trying to establish who was behind the station, Resistance Radio. Stephen Evans reports from Berlin.

Those arrested face charges of forming a criminal organisation and inciting racial hatred. The operation of the 24-hour station was complicated. It used a computer server in the United States, and listeners would have to register under false names and addresses. The number of listeners can't be measured accurately, but it's unlikely to be more than 135,000.

An appeals court in Paris has agreed to send a Rwandan rebel leader to The Hague where he's wanted by the International Criminal Court. Callixte Mbarushimana, who was arrested in France last month, faces 11 charges of committing war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo last year.

The President of Peru, Alan Garcia, has asked the US administration for help in recovering archaeological treasures taken from the Inca city of Machu Picchu. Mr Garcia says that the American explorer Hiram Bingham sent 46,000 pieces from Machu Picchu to Yale University shortly after he rediscovered the Inca site in 1911. Dan Collyns reports.

In an open letter, which was delivered to the US embassy in Lima, Mr Garcia said the request was a matter of national good faith. Peru says Yale must return 46,000 pieces, which include ceramics, bone and textiles, which were loaned to the university after Dr Bingham happened upon what's widely regarded to be the lost city of the Incas. In recent weeks, the Peruvian government has upped the stakes in its diplomatic war to have the artefacts returned before the centenary of what it calls the "rediscovery" of Machu Picchu next year.

BBC News