BBC在线收听下载:韩国望效仿日本捕鲸

BBC news 2012-07-05

BBC News with Zoe Diamond

The electoral authorities in Mexico have announced they will recount the votes in more than half the ballot boxes in Sunday's presidential poll after finding inconsistencies in the vote tallies. The leader of the left-wing PDR party, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has demanded a total recount after preliminary results put him in second place. The leading candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto, has denied allegations that his party bought votes. From Mexico City, here's Will Grant.

Since the election, numerous videos have emerged on YouTube of people claiming they received credit with a major supermarket chain in exchange for their votes. Mr Pena Nieto dismissed such accusations against him as politically motivated and suggested the videos had been faked by his opponents. 'These things happen in all elections, it's nothing new.' He said of the videos, pointing a finger of blame at his closest challenger, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Mr Lopez Obrador has called for a complete recount of the votes, saying the elections were 'unequal and dirty'.

Scientists around the world have hailed the discovery of a particle which could illuminate our understanding of the universe. The team from the Cern Laboratory in Switzerland say their find is consistent with the Higgs boson, which is thought to give atoms their mass and bind the universe together. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Stephen Hawking, who speaks with the aid of a computer, said the discovery was one of the most important of the 21st century.

"The results strongly suggest that we have found the next particle, the particle that gives mass to other particles. That will be strong evidence for the so-called standard model of particle physics. In the theory, that explains all our experiments so far. This is an important result, and should earn Peter Higgs a Nobel Prize."

The former chief executive of the British bank, Barclays, has appeared before members of parliament in London. Bob Diamond appeared a day after resigning because of revelations the bank rigged a key interest rate. Robin Brant reports.

Bob Diamond went to parliament to defend himself and the bank, he repeatedly told MPs that he'd loved. The Barclays traders who fixed the lending rate were reprehensible , he said, but there were a small number – he said he didn't know what was going on – senior management at the very top weren't aware. When they did find out, he said it made him feel physically sick. There was an apology, but he also told MPs that Barclays was being vilified for being the first bank to cooperate and admit wrongdoing.

Islamist fighters who've smashed ancient tombs in Timbuktu in northern Mali have told the BBC they will destroy all monuments they consider in breach of sharia law. The fighters from the militant group, Ansar Dine, have smashed at least half the shrines in Timbuktu.

This is the World News from the BBC.

South Korea has said that it wants to begin hunting whales under rules permitting whaling for scientific research following the example of its close neighbor, Japan. South Korean delegates told a meeting of International Whaling Commission they would submit their whaling plans to an international panel of scientists for scrutiny. The proposal was strongly condemned by anti-whaling governments at the meeting in Panama City, from where Richard Black reports.

Korea has a longer documented history of whale meat eating than anywhere else in the world, dating back possibly 8,000 years. But recently, catchers have been limited to minke whales snared in fishing nets, officially by accident. The South Korean government would like to let its fishermen hunt whales openly around the coast. But that's prohibited under IWC rules, hence the proposal to follow the Japanese example – a new scientific whaling regulations. How many whales will be targeted isn't clear. The South Korean delegation here said the proposals would first have to be scrutinized by an international panel of scientists.

The authorities in France have placed the former boss of one of Europe's largest telecommunications companies under formal investigation over the suicides of more than 50 employees. Didier Lombard of France Telecom is accused by French unions of presiding over management that caused staff intolerable levels of stress. Some left suicide notes blaming the company for their deaths.

Police in Spain have recovered a precious medieval religious manuscript that was stolen from the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela last year. The treasured artifact of Spain's cultural heritage was found in a garage in Santiago. A handyman who used to work at the cathedral and three members of his family have been arrested. The 12th century codex is considered the first guide for Christians following the ancient pilgrim route to Santiago.

BBC World News