BBC news 2011-05-21 加文本

BBC news 2011-05-21

BBC News with Jerry Smit

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has held talks in Washington a day after President Obama launched a new policy on the Middle East. President Obama said the changes sweeping across the Middle East presented a moment of opportunity. Mr Netanyahu said everyone wanted a peace that would endure, that a peace based on illusions would crash on the rocks of reality in the Middle East. Paul Adams reports from Washington.

The two leaders tried hard not to show what a difficult encounter this had been. President Obama said only that there were some differences on what he called "precise formulations and language". This, he said, would happen between friends. Mr Netanyahu also said there were differences "here and there". But unlike his host, he proceeded to lay them all out, saying that Israel could not go back to the lines that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and that Israel would have to have a long-term military presence in the Jordan Valley.

Syrian troops have opened fire on anti-government protesters, killing at least 27 people across the country. In the third largest city Homs, reports said a child was among those shot dead in the protests. Foreign journalists are barred from Syria, so the reports cannot be independently confirmed. An eyewitness told the BBC about how the security forces handled the situation.

"The protests took off in Homs straight after Friday prayers from many mosques and some smaller side streets. The surprise today is that the security forces are resorting to several tactics to disperse the protests. These include firing shots at protesters and driving their vehicles in the middle of the protests."

The United Nations refugee agency says it believes around 4,000 people have fled Syria to Lebanon in recent weeks. The agency said many of those fleeing reported heavy bombardment in the Syrian town of Talkalakh. The UNHCR says the refugees need food, shelter and medical help. Syria had denied shelling the town. It said that the area was full of smugglers and there had been fighting between them and the security forces.

The former head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been freed on bail from a prison in New York and sent to a temporary home in Manhattan. The release came after what seemed to be a last-minute hitch over where he'd stay. Mr Strauss-Kahn is accused of a serious sex assault on a hotel maid, the charge he denies. Laura Trevelyan reports.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was going to be detained in a smart apartment block on the Upper East side of Manhattan, but some neighbours apparently objected to the disruption this would cause. So Dominique Strauss-Kahn's lawyers went back to court and argued that he should move, instead, into a temporary location run by the security company overseeing his electronic monitoring and 24-hour guard. The judge approved this location temporarily. It's only suitable for a few days, and then Mr Strauss-Kahn must go somewhere else.

BBC News

Political prisoners who were released in Burma earlier this week have been speaking about their treatment in jail. One of the prisoners, a Buddhist monk, told the BBC he'd been hung upside down and hit with a bamboo rod. The Burmese government released more than 14,000 detainees, but only about 50 are thought to be political prisoners. Some human rights groups have dismissed the amnesty as pathetic.

Queen Elizabeth has left the Irish Republic after a historic visit, the first by a British monarch for 100 years. On the last day, the Queen was greeted by cheering crowds in the southern city of Cork. Some nationalists opposed the visit because Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom, but many welcomed her. From Cork, here's Peter Hunt.

This has been a week when the once impossible has been made possible and effortlessly so. This morning, the Queen even shook hands for the first time with a member of Sinn Fein, one more symbol of change to add to the many others. The grip of the past has been loosened; the Anglo-Irish relationship has been rejuvenated. The Queen flew home, mission accomplished.

Peter Hunt

Researchers say they have discovered the members of a remote Amazonian tribe in Brazil, the Amondawa, have no words for "day", "month" or "year". Jason Palmer has been studying the findings.

The Amondawa people were first contacted by the outside world in 1986, but it is only now that researchers are getting to grips with the Amondawa language. They have no clocks or calendars or even a word for time. As such, they have no ages, instead, taking up different names as they reach new stages of life, passing on their names to younger members. As the younger generation learn Portuguese alongside their native tongue, they have no trouble picking up more familiar notions of time. It could be that the Amondawa's time without time may be limited.

And that's the BBC News.