BBC news 2011-05-19 加文本

BBC news 2011-05-19

BBC News with Julie Candler

In what correspondents describe as a dramatic escalation of American pressure on Syria, the US has imposed its first ever sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad. Washington says he and eight others have been targeted for violence and repression during the two-month uprising in Syria. The State Department spokesman Mark Toner said it was time to increase the pressure on President Assad.

"I think we're looking at what next steps, what possible additional pressure we can provide really to crystallise our message to the Syrian government, which is that your current behaviour is unacceptable and the violence must stop. The Syrian government has talked a lot about reform, has made a lot of promises but done very little. So again, we're trying to seek additional ways to apply pressure on them."

Earlier, President Assad said the Syrian security forces had made mistakes in their handling of the protests, while the BBC received new reports of army attacks on civilians.

A senior Chinese army general, Chen Bingde, has said China has no intention of attempting to match US military power. Speaking in Washington at the National Defense University, General Chen said that the United States military forces were far more advanced than their Chinese counterparts. He said there was a 20-year difference between US and Chinese military capabilities, but that China's military forces had improved considerably in recent years.

China has acknowledged that the controversial Three Gorges dam has created major problems. The country's policy-making body, the State Council, says it plans to deal with the difficulties. Paddy Clark reports. 

The problems posed by the Three Gorges dam were discussed at a meeting of the State Council, chaired by the Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. A statement issued afterwards said there was an urgent need for ecological protection, the prevention of geological disasters and the smooth relocation of displaced residents. It said problems also existed for transport, irrigation and water supplies further down the Yangtze River, which the dam straddles. The dam, which cost nearly $40bn, led to the submerging of towns, fields and heritage sites, and forced more than a million and a quarter people to move.

The World Bank says the Indian government's main programmes for the poor are only delivering limited benefits, with much of the money lost to corruption and bad management. India spends more than 2% of its gross domestic product on poverty reduction, but the World Bank says that its food distribution scheme suffers so much from corruption that only about 40% of its grain reaches the poor.

There's been an almost sixfold rise in the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Satellite images from the government show that between March and April last year, around 100 sq km of vegetation were destroyed. But this year, that figure was almost 600. The worst affected state is Mato Grosso.

World News from the BBC

In the first address of her historic visit to the Irish Republic, Queen Elizabeth has extended her "deep sympathy" to those who she said had suffered during the troubled past of the two countries. She spoke of the painful legacy of history, but added that Britain and Ireland were now firm friends and equal partners. From Dublin, Peter Hunt reports.

At Dublin Castle, where once previous monarchs came as rulers, this monarch, wearing a dress adorned with hand-sewn embroidered shamrocks, came to reflect. She impressed her audience immediately by opening her speech in Gaelic with the words "President and friends". The Queen said she wanted to extend her "sincere thoughts and deep sympathy" to all those who had suffered as a consequence of the UK and Ireland's shared troubled past. She went on, "With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all."

Libya has released four international journalists who had been detained for several weeks. Two Americans, a British man and a Spaniard disappeared while covering the conflict in Libya. The four are said to be in good health. Andrew North reports from Tripoli.

They were all brought to the Tripoli hotel where the foreign media covering the conflict are staying, looking tired and somewhat bewildered by the scrum of journalists awaiting them. Libyan officials say the four had been freed by a judge after being given a one-year suspended prison sentence for illegally entering the country. There's been no word on the fate of a South African citizen, photographer Anton Hammerl, who's believed to have been detained in Libya in early April.

Astronomers in Japan say they've found 10 planets the size of Jupiter which do not appear to orbit any star. Writing in the science journal Nature, the researchers say it's unclear how the planets, which are near the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, came to be without a star to orbit. One theory is that the planets may have been ejected from infant solar systems by gravitational forces or inter-planetary collisions.

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