BBC news 2010-11-30 加文本

BBC news 2010-11-30

BBC News with David Legge

The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described the disclosure by the website Wikileaks of hundreds of thousands of classified US diplomatic messages as an attack not just on the United States but on the international community. Mrs Clinton said she regretted the leaks.

"I will not comment on or confirm what are alleged to be stolen State Department cables, but I can say that the United States deeply regrets the disclosure of any information that was intended to be confidential, including private discussions between counterparts or our diplomats' personal assessments and observations."

Mrs Clinton said she was confident that partnerships which the Obama administration had worked hard to build would withstand this challenge. She said the US was taking aggressive steps against those who, in her words, stole the information.

Amongst the revelations from the leaked documents so far are reports that Saudi Arabia urged the US to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities and new details of American concern over corruption in Afghanistan. The messages also expose US diplomats' stark assessments of many world leaders. One of the latest revelations is about a member of the British royal family, Prince Andrew. In a dispatch, the US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan reported that the prince had criticised British anti-corruption officials and journalists during a lunch in the capital Bishkek.

President Obama has proposed a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers as part of efforts to cut spending and reduce the country's massive deficit. Mr Obama said government employees must share in the broad sacrifice as required.

"And today, I'm proposing a two-year pay freeze for all civilian federal workers. This would save $2bn over the rest of this fiscal year and $28bn in cumulative savings over the next five years. I want to be clear this freeze does not apply to the men and women of our armed forces, who along with their families continue to bear enormous burdens with our nation at war."

Correspondents say the savings from the pay freeze amount to a fraction of the overall deficit.

Three senior Fifa officials who will vote on the 2018 and 2022 bids for the football World Cup are alleged to have taken bribes in exchange for awarding lucrative marketing contracts. BBC Television's current affairs programme Panorama reveals that Ricardo Teixeira of Brazil, Nicolas Leoz of Paraguay and Cameroon's Issa Hayatou, who all sit on Fifa's executive committee, received payment from a Swiss sports marketing firm in the 1990s. The BBC says Panorama's revelations, just days ahead of the 2018 decision being made, are in the public interest. Fifa declined the programme's requests for an interview.

World News from the BBC

Egypt's main opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, appears to have lost most of their seats in Sunday's parliamentary election. The group had 88 members in the last parliament, but a spokesman said only a few had progressed to the second round next week. Official results are due on Tuesday, but early indications suggest President Mubarak's ruling party has won a landslide victory. Human rights groups have supported the opposition's claims that the vote was marred by irregularities.

A court in the United States has sentenced a Somali man to 30 years in prison for piracy off the coast of Somalia. Jama Idle Ibrahim was captured earlier this year after taking part in an attack on a US naval flotilla, which the pirates had apparently mistaken for merchant ships.

Police in southern Italy have arrested a local odd-job man accused of shooting dead at least five people over several years for failing to pay him on time for work. Duncan Kennedy reports.

For more than 10 years, people living in the small village of Cassibile feared a killer in their midst. They named him the Monster of Cassibile. In fact, prosecutors say Giuseppe Raeli was a local odd-job man. Between 1997 and 2009, it's believed he shot at least five people and wounded four others, although police believe he may be responsible for more deaths. Prosecutors say he used a shotgun on his victims, who range from a 29-year-old woman to a man of 74. They say he was ready to murder for unpaid bills as low as $260.

A new round of talks on climate change, sponsored by the United Nations, has begun in Cancun in Mexico, the first such negotiations since the Copenhagen climate summit a year ago. Delegates to the 12-day conference hope to make progress on protecting forests and on providing help for poorer nations struggling to cope with the impact of climate change.

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