BBC在线收听下载:奥巴马历史性的访问缅甸

BBC news 2012-11-09

BBC News with David Auston.

The former US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has come face to face for the first time with a man who shot her through the head and killed six others in an attack last year. Mrs Giffords looked down in court to her attacker, Jared Loughner, was told he'd spent the rest of his life in prison for the 2011 shooting spree. Rajesh Mirchandani reports from Washington.

Nearly two years after the shooting attack in Tucson, Gabrielle Giffords stood in court along with her husband, the former astronaut Mark Kelly. Mr Kelly told the accused Jared Lee Loughner: You may have put a bullet through her head, but you haven't put a dent in her commitment to make the world a better place. Ms Giffords, the Democratic Congresswoman at the time, did not speak in court. Twenty-four-year-old Loughner agreed a plea deal with prosecutors that meant he did / not stand trial but will now spend the rest of his life in prison with no possibility of parole.

The United States has confirmed that President Barack Obama will make a ground breaking visit to Burma later this month. The White House said Mr Obama planned to meet Burma's President Thein Sein and the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. It would be the first time an American president has visited the formerly isolated southeastern Asian country, which is now engaged in a process of political reform.

The United States says Iran attacked one of its unmanned drone aircraft in international airspace over the gulf last week. The Defence Department said Iranian jets fired multiple rounds at the drone, it was not hit and returned to base safely. The Defence Department said Iran had been warned that the US would continue to conduct surveillance operations in the region, and would protect its military assets when necessary.

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The UN special envoy for Africa Sahel region Romano Prodi has said every effort would be made to avoid military intervention in Mali. Mr Prodi was speaking after talks with the Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. West African heads of states are expected to meet on Sunday to adopt a plan for their troops to recapture northern Mali from militant Islamists. Algeria has been reluctant to agree to such a plan.

World News from the BBC

An international trade dispute over bananas dating back two decades has finally been settled. The European Union and ten Lantin American countries have signed a deal in Geneva. Here's our business reporter Mark Gregory.

The head of the World Trade Organization Pascal Lamy called it a truly historic moment. Pointing out that many officials involved in the original proceedings had long since retired. Latin American banana growers claimed that EU import tariffs designed to protect farmers in former European colonies in the West Indies and Africa unfairly discriminated against their products.

Search and rescue efforts are still under way in Guatemala following a huge earthquake near the Mexican border on Wednesday. Around 50 people were killed and scores more were injured. Our central America correspondent Will Grant reports.

Rescue workers and fire-fighters worked through the night to free trapped victims including ten members of a single family in a small town of San Cristobal Cucho. Electricity remains cut off to march the region, medical supplies are beginning to arrive in the province, but there are still a  shortage of basic necessities and stuff.

Ten Columbian farm workers have been killed by unidentified gunmen in one of the worst targeted killings in the country in years. One of the survivors described how three armed men approached the foreman at the farm in Antioquia province, and asked  if the farm owner have been paying protection money, they then opened fire and killed nine men and one woman.

The chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in the Hague Serge Brammertz has rejected the assertion by Serbia's President that there was no genocide in Srebrenica during the Bosnian war. In an interview with radio Free Europe, Mr Brammertz has said Tomislav Nikolic's statement contradicted the international court's ruling, the genocide had taken place in 1995.

Those are the latest stories from the BBC News