BBC在线收听下载:欧洲央行出购困境国家政府债券的新方案

BBC news 2012-09-07

BBC news with Fiona Macdonald.

The European Central Bank has unveiled its new program to buy government bonds from struggling countries in the eurozone. Stock markets in Europe and the United States rose sharply in response. The bond-buying plan aims to make it cheaper for countries such as Spain and Italy to raise the funds they need. The Italian prime minister Mario Monti welcomed the ECB's announcement as an important step forward. Allan Jonstan reports.

Italy's problems are not quite severe as Spain's. But it is still in difficult and dangerous financial waters. For months, prime minister Monti has called for measures to help shield the eurozone's weaker economies from unbearable pressures on the money markets. And he is clearly relieved that the European Central Bank will now play a more robust role in this area. But Mr Monti is determined to try to do everything he can to avoid having to turn to the bank for help .

The Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has rejected the conditions attached by the International Monetary Fund and European Union to a new 90-million-dollar loan for Hungary. Using the social media site Facebook, Mr Orban said that the conditions asked for the loan were unacceptable.

Police in France say three out of four people found dead at a holiday's spot in the Alps on Wednesday had been shot in the head. Three of the bodies were in a car. A dead cyclist was found nearby, as was a young girl who'd been seriously wounded and is now in a coma. Police sources say one of the victims in the car was an Iraqi-born computer engineer Saad Al-Hilli who lived in Britain and worked in an aerospace industry. Imogen Foulkes reports from the Annecy.

French police described Wednesday's killings as an act of extreme savagery---four people shot dead in broad daylight in a popular tourist spot. A British cyclist arrived at the scene just minutes after the killings. Three adults, a mother, a father and a grandmother lay dead in their car. A French cyclist was dead on the road with a 7-year-old girl apparently dying. She is now in hospital together with a child of just four believed to be her sister. But they are also being guarded by armed police.

A boat carrying migrants from Syrian and Iraq has sank off the coast of western Turkey, killing about 60 people, most of them women and children. A senior official suggested the migrants were mainly Palestinians. The boat's captain has been detained.

Syrian opposition activists say the army has retaken control of a town close to the border with Jordan in what appears to be an attempt to stem the flow of refugees fleeing the country. Troops backed by tanks are reported to have entered the town of Tal Shehab which has been one of the main crossing points for those trying to escape the fighting. More than 60,000 Syrians have entered Jordan since the conflict began.

World news from the BBC.

MPs in Burma forced the nine judges on the constitutional court from office in a dispute, pitting the government against the parliament created as part of political reforms. State media said president Thein Sein had accepted the judges' resignations after parliament voted to impeach them. Here's our southeast Asia correspondent Jonnathan Head.

The issue was a crucial one for Burma. What powers does parliament have in relation to the government? The court had ruled in March that parliamentary committees which do much of the preparatory work before decisions are put to a vote do not have national status, so don't match the authority of government ministries. The court is supposed to be the final arbiter of what is or isn't constitutional. But parliament has now challenged that assumption and won.

A United States military judge has ordered the man accused of killing 13 people at a Texas army base to shave off his beard or have it forcibly removed. But Nidal Hasan, an army psychiatrist, said he was complying with his Muslim faith. Jenner Bryon reports.

Nidal Hasan's facial hair which appeared in June is against army regulations. His lawyer said removing the beard would violate his right to religious freedom. But the presiding military judge described it as a distracting and disruptive sideshow. The army psychiatrist is accused of opening fire on soldiers at Fort Hood Texas who were preparing for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Hasan faces the death penalty if convicted.

At the Paralympic Games in London a British runner Jonnie Peacock has won the gold medal in the T44 100 meters race for single and double below-the-knee amputees. Peacock crossed the line in a time 10.90 seconds, a new paralympic record. Crowds roared in the Olympic stadium for the game's most eagerly-anticipated event which organizers have described as the battle of the blade runners. The defending champion Oscar Pistorius was fourth.