BBC在线收听下载:美面临财政悬崖 议员仍争论不休

BBC news 2012-12-31

BBC News with Neil Nunes

Leaders of the bitterly divided American Congress are making last-minute attempts to stop significant new spending cuts and tax rises automatically taking effect on January first. Both houses are ready for rare Sunday sessions. They are trying to prevent the United States economy from falling off what been dubbed the fiscal cliff, the automatic imposition of some $600bn worth of taxing increase and spending cuts dating back to the Bush era. From Washington Jonny Dymond.

One nation with a very divided government. President Obama and congress are grappling for a deal with just 36 hours before time runs out. If there is no deal, the press of failure could be high. The average American family will see that tax rise by more than $2,000 a year. As money sucked out the economy, a second American recession is thought likely to begin. And confidence in the American government around the world would plummet. Financial markets would probably take fright.

Meanwhile President Obama says he will put his full weight to behind getting new gun control measures approved the United States within 12 months. Mr Obama expressed doubt about the idea put forward by the pro-gun lobby to position armed guards in every school.

I'm skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools. And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem. And here is the bottom line, we're not going to get this done unless the American people decide it's important.

After the mass shooting in Connecticut earlier this month, in which 26 children and teachers were killed, President Obama said will task force to come up with urgent suggestions and how such massacres could be avoided in future.

The President of the Central African Republican Francois Bozize says he's ready to form a government of national unity with a rebel coalition that has seized several key towns in the country. Here is Mary Harper.

Mr Bozize who was speaking after a meeting with the head of the African Union Yayi Boni said he would not stand for re-election in 2016. He said he was ready for immediate talks with the rebel coalition. The rebel says they will consider the president's offer. After seizing a town on Saturday, just 150km from the capital, they are in a very strong position. The government army supported by troops from Chad, failed to contain the rebel advance, in some cases, abandoning towns without a fight.

A security forces in Lybia say an investigation is underway after a bomb blast at a Coptic Christian church, in which two people were killed. The explosion happened at Dafniya, near the city of Misrata, those dead were Egyptian. Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians living and work in Libya.

World News from the BBC

One of Italy's foremost scientists, Rita Levi Montalcini who was a joint winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine has died in Rome aged 103. She overcame Fascist and anti-Semitic discrimination before and during the second World War and went on to carry out a hugely important research into the development of the cells and the human body. Alan Johnston reports from Rome.

Rita Levi Montalcini was born into an intellectual and artistic Jewish family in 1909. She graduated from a medical school in Turin and went on to working academia. But her career soon ran fell of anti-Semitic laws introduced under Italy's Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini. With the coming of peace, she took her research forward at a university in the United States, there she made discoveries that shed light on the mystery surrounding abnormal cell development in humans.

A court in Bahrain has jailed two policemen for seven years for beating a man to death where he was held in police custody during the political unrest last year. They are among a number of officers on trial or under an investigation for allegedly torturing Shia detainees. Last month the international panel of legal experts accused the Bahraini security force of routinely using torture to punish or extracted confession from hundreds of Shia protesters. Bahrain's Interior minister rejected the allegations.

The Egyptian football association says their premier League matches will resume in February after a year suspension. It was agreed that game restart in February 1st, exactly a year after a riot that killed more than 70 people. The violence happened during a match in Port Said between the country's top teams, Al-Ahly and Al-Masry. None spectators are to be allowed into stadiums during the first season.

BBC World News