BBC在线收听下载:一名印度妇女通过法律废除童婚

BBC news 2012-04-26

BBC News with Iain Purdon

The media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has told a British inquiry into media ethics that he's never asked a prime minister for anything. Mr Murdoch said he wanted to end what he called the myth that he'd used the power or influence of one of his British newspapers to gain favourable treatment.

"Politicians go out of their way to impress people in the press. I think that's part of the democratic process. All politicians of all sides like to have their views known by the editors, hoping that they will be put across, hoping that they will succeed in impressing people. That's the game."

He said that if he was solely concerned with commercial interest, he would always have backed the Conservative Party because it was more supportive of business.

The French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has said that the UN Security Council might have to consider action backed up by military force in Syria if the current peace plan fails. Activists say the violence is continuing with more than 20 people killed during the day. Jim Muir has been following events from neighbouring Lebanon.

In the city of Hama, distraught residents pulled from the rubble of a destroyed building the broken body of a two-year-old little girl, one of at least seven people who activists said were killed in violent shelling of the quarter by government forces. Two UN observers were a short distance away in the centre of town. There was more deadly shelling in the town and the south and deaths from sniping in suburbs of Damascus despite UN monitors being close to both places. The French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has had enough. He said that if the Syrian regime does not comply with the truce by early May, the Security Council should consider authorising military intervention.

The head of Israel's armed forces has said he doesn't think Iran will develop nuclear weapons. In an interview with an Israeli newspaper, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz said the Iranian leadership was made up of "rational people". It would not want, as he put it, to "go the extra mile".

In the United States, the Republican Newt Gingrich is about to withdraw from the race to be his party's presidential candidate. American media said Mr Gingrich would suspend his campaign next Tuesday. Addressing Republican supporters in North Carolina, Mr Gingrich said he still believed that he would be the best candidate, but he had to be honest about what was happening in the real world, and that he would now give his support to Mr Romney.

"I am committed to this party. I am committed to defeating Obama. We will find ways to try to be helpful. I do think it's pretty clear that Governor Romney is ultimately going to be the nominee, and we'll do everything we can to make sure that he is, in fact, effective. And we as a team are effective both in winning this fall and then frankly in governing."

Newt Gingrich speaking earlier

(And that's) This is the World News from the BBC.

The Libyan authorities have banned political parties based on religion, tribe or ethnicity. The announcement comes two months before elections to choose an assembly which will form a government and write a new constitution. Libya's National Transitional Council said the ban was in the interests of national unity. It's been denounced as undemocratic by the Muslim Brotherhood, which formed a political party in March and was expected to perform well in the elections.

A military judge in the United States has rejected a request to throw out all the charges in the case of Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking thousands of classified documents to the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks. The decision made at a hearing in Fort Meade, Maryland means Private Manning's trial will go ahead in September as planned.

In what's being seen as a landmark case, an Indian woman has legally annulled a marriage that her parents arranged for her when she was a child. Laxmi Sargara, who is now 18, was married at the age of one to a three-year-old groom in the state of Rajasthan. Jo Jolly reports.

The teenager only found out about her marriage this month when her parents told her she would have to move to her in-laws' house. After asking a local social worker for help, Laxmi was able to persuade her husband to sign a legal document to annul the marriage and have this verified by a government official. Child marriage is illegal in India but is still common in many rural areas. Campaigners hope this case will encourage others to fight against the practice.

Scientists at a German research institute say satellite data from Global Positioning Systems, or GPS, could be used to provide much faster tsunami warnings. The scientists say they've analysed data gathered from over 500 GPS stations at the time a devastating earthquake hit Japan in March last year. They say it could have been used to predict both the correct magnitude of the quake and the size of the resultant tsunami in just three to four minutes, faster than traditional methods.

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